woodlayson

Praise Report Confessional, Part Liz

2009-02-17T06:35:00.001-08:00

Jaimie's my hero, so that makes it okay that I'm ripping off her title.

So here's my God story, for the edification of the saints. For those who don't know, my brother left a month ago to live in Brazil for a semester as part of an exchange program. Mom and Dad planned to fly down on the week of his birthday to visit him. Not long after West left, they started the process of getting their visas so they'd have plenty of lead time.

Meanwhile, God and I are dealing with some trust issues. The whole house-building process has been wearing on me big time and I just haven't been "hearing" anything pretty much since it began. I'm spending most of my time waffling between "What did I do wrong?" and "Why are You being such a jerk?" Right?

I know these seem unrelated, but bear with me.

Mom and Dad sent off their visa applications, and a week or so later they came back. Denied. Why? Because the price had gone up. Okay, wacky thing about Brazilian visas (and others, I'm sure). Technically, they're free. However, that's total bullshit, and not just because you're REQUIRED to send in your application Next-Day Air (with a return envelope, ALSO Next-Day Air). They have this thing called a reciprocal policy, or something like that, which basically means they charge Americans whatever America charges Brazilians for a visa. The return letter from the Brazilian consulate explained that the US had raised its visa rate, therefore the same rate was being applied to their visas and the application needed to be resubmitted with the new fee. Here's the punchline, you guys: The effective date of the rate increase? Was the day the denial letter came. Meaning, of course, that their visa applications had been denied on these grounds the day BEFORE the effective date.

So they submit their applications again. A week or so later, they come back again denied. This time, it has something to do with the photos, although they never found out exactly what. At this point, there is barely enough time to submit a third round of applications, so Mom and Dad go to the best passport photo guy in town and get their pictures redone. Then straight on to the post office to get everything sent off that day. This was followed by four days of raw nerves and occasional nausea trying not to think about what would happen if the visas were denied again, or just didn't come in time.

Now we've arrived at last Saturday. I had a gig to play that night (Lutheran VD Dance! Yeow!), and earlier Chris and I went to Anniston to take a look at some building materials. I only mention this because bad things always happen when we go to Anniston. ALWAYS. Ask Laura.

I woke up with a headache that morning, which is typical for Saturday, but as we were leaving Anniston it started to blossom into a full-on business-end migraine. Awesome. Just past Jacksonville, I get a call from Mom.

"The worst thing that could've possibly happened, has happened. Our passports came back. Mine is stamped, and Dad's isn't."

She went on to say that there was no denial letter with any sort of explanation. It must've just been a mistake. But it was the weekend, and Monday was President's Day (why, by the way, does the Brazilian consulate observe President's Day?). Their flight left on Wednesday. That left Tuesday, the only business day the consulate would be open, and they'd made it very clear in past phone conversations that they only accept meetings by appointment.

So even if they could show up at the consulate on Tuesday morning unannounced and get Dad's passport stamped, which was seeming unlikely, there was absolutely nothing they could do about it for the next three days except sit around and dwell on the situation. It all seemed so cruel.

None of this was helping my headache either, and by the time we got home, I was doing the migraine dance, where I pace for a while, then sit down for five seconds, then pace some more, then lie down on one side, then the other, then more pacing. Every time I change position, it distracts my body from feeling pain for a good two seconds. Normally, I'd take enough Tylenol PM to knock out an elephant and sleep it off, but I had to be at that dance, so, not an option. The closer it got to gig-time, the worse I felt. At one point, Chris handed me an orange-flavored Goody powder and as I tried to psych myself up to down it (because at this point I was feeling nauseous and didn't want to swallow anything), I just started bawling. If you're a person who gets headaches, you know that this is the worst thing you can do. Nothing will amplify the pain you're feeling more quickly or more effectively than crying. It was completely involuntary. Chris had no idea what to do with me.

At this point, I should say that about a week before, I'd had a pleasant thought about the whole house situation. We have an interest-only construction loan that rolls over into a true mortgage when the house is done. Every month, we make the interest payment on the money we've used to date, which means that every month that payment gets higher. Chris and I have been squirreling away money in various places so that we'd have the padding to make these payments when they got high, what with the work I'd be missing to oversee the construction. The payment for this last month was kinda scary, and I did the math and realized my paycheck wouldn't cover it. I thought we might have to dip into the emergency fund, which I was hoping we wouldn't ever actually have to do. Then I remembered I had this gig on Saturday and that would give me just enough. It's like God was telling me, "See? I'm paying attention."

So now, here it is, Saturday night, and I have a debilitating headache that I'm starting to think is going to keep me from making it to the gig. Completely aside from the fact that this puts the rest of the band in an awkward situation, I'm starting to feel betrayed, like this reassuring realization I had a week ago was just some fluffy bunny thought I invented to make myself feel better.

I had Chris call Jimmy H. to tell him what was going on in case I couldn't make it, and Jimmy said he'd actually woken up with a migraine that morning and had some pills with him in case it flared back up. Maybe I could try one and see if it helped. So I made myself go and prayed that Jimmy's magic pill would work.

I found Jimmy first thing and took one of his pills. The band graciously played three instrumentals to start, I suspect to give me some time. By the time I got up, the headache was manageable, and by the end of the first set it was gone. This is going to sound silly, because I know I didn't have cancer or leprosy or anything, but on the drive home I kept looking at the trees and the stars and the buildings and thinking about how beautiful everything was. I was just so happy to feel normal again.

Somewhere in the course this giddy stupor, I realized that I really ought to apologize. God didn't come down from heaven and take away my migraine, but He had my back. So I said I was sorry and that didn't feel like enough. It's not often that I feel compelled to use the word "repent." It's a great word, don't get me wrong, but aside from the moth-balled religious connotations it conjures through no fault of its own, it always carried a heavy weight for me. When you repent, you're not just saying you're sorry. You're saying you've changed. That thing you did? That's not you anymore. Not that you'll never do it again, or even that you'll never again arrive at this place you've left, but that you're able to see things differently now. It's very seldom I'm that confident. But it seemed right, so I said it.

Right after I repented of my lack of trust, God told me to let Mom and Dad know that their visa situation was going to work out. So I called Mom and she put me on speakerphone and I told them both the whole story. Cool things happened on Sunday, too, but I don't know that story first-hand. Suffice it to say that Mom and Dad didn't have to spend the whole long weekend in dread of the worst-case scenario.

Sometime over the weekend, Dad faxed the consulate a letter explaining the situation, along with copies of his application, etc. He was there when the doors opened Tuesday morning, and I got a call from Mom at around 8:30 saying he got the stamp. They'd looked at the fax and were expecting him. Also, they do, in fact, have someone who deals with walk-ins. I guess they give the appointment-only spiel to discourage it unless you're desparate enough to come anyway. They are so mean. Anyway, he was in and out in 15 minutes.

They left the next day and Mom called me from the Atlanta airport to say they just had the best layover ever.

"The best layover ever? Um..."

"Our terminal was right across from this awesome pub that had the BEST beers. It was right next door to the bathroom and two doors down from the smoking section!"

So see? God's cool like that.

Home on the range

2009-02-10T08:48:00.000-08:00

Wanna see what I've been workin' on for the past, oh, going on six months?

Ta-da! It's a well house! Not really, no. But see that pile of dirt behind the well house? And that tiny Port-A-Potty in the distance? Wave, Port-A-Potty. Yeah well, that's the humble beginnings of Chez Woodlayson, circa late August.

The dirt came from...

...this great big hole in the ground, the previously referenced Party Hole. Seen here in mid-September, looking less like a hole and more like a bona fide basement.

We woke up one morning and there was some wood on top of our basement. The framing took a couple of weeks but in retrospect, it really does seem like it happened overnight. Although that may have something to do with the fact that after this stage was complete, the lion's share of the work fell into our capable hands and now it takes a week to stain a damn door.

Pictured is the open-air main floor before construction started on the second story, mid-October.

Ah, and here is Princess Peanut of the Serengeti, surveying the futile labors of mortal man from her lofty perch.

I got her to supervise for me a couple times, but it didn't work out. She kept calling the construction workers weak-minded earthlings and accusing them of smoking weed in the john.

Jump to November, and here it is with walls and a roof and everything.

Admittedly, I've gotten lax in my picture-taking duties lately, but I can say that now, in February, it looks much the same as it did in this picture. It has shingles now, and windows, not to mention the 2000+ feet of electrical wire and the plumbing pipe and the ducting and all that good stuff that's not very visually striking. That's what I tell myself anyway.

So, pretty soon I get to check "Design and build our own house" off my bucket list. Of course, this defers the "Live debt-free" item on said list indefinitely, but you can't have everything.

Great minds

2008-10-09T18:52:00.000-07:00

So Chris and I are sitting in the den of my grandmother's house, where we're staying while the house is being built, and we're watching Saturday Night Live. They're doing the news segment, like they do. And they do this super funny story on the AIG bailout. My cell phone rings, and it's my grandmother, calling me from her bedroom.

Mommy Ann: Calling long distance.

Me: I'll accept the charges.

MA: Are you watching anything on TV right now?

Me: Well, sorta yeah. Why?

MA: Because you need to turn to Channel 13. Saturday Night Live is on and it's hilarious.

Is she the coolest or WHAT?

Text exchange

2008-07-22T12:32:00.000-07:00

Me: You have a package.

Chris: You bet I do.

M: God delivered it, you signed for it.

C: Yep. Just my package.

M: Seriously, though, you have a package.

C: I know. You've seen it. I've got proof and everything.

M: Sigh.

Brush with Fame

2008-06-26T11:57:00.000-07:00

So, yesterday, yeah? We're in downtown Atlanta -- my husband and I, my parents, West and Hannah -- and we're cussing our way through traffic trying to figure out where the Cobb Theater is, 'cause we're going to see Eddie Izzard perform there in a couple of hours. We take a turn that we think will get us there, and it's the wrong turn, of course (because in Atlanta, two wrongs don't make a right, but they are pre-requisite). We find ourselves in this swanky brick-paved parking complex for some nice hotel. And as we're looking for a place to turn around, West points out this guy standing off the road a ways on this grassy knoll with a soccer ball, putting his shirt on.

West: Wow, um, that guy kinda looks like Eddie Izzard.

Hannah: What guy?

W: That guy.

H: Whoa, yeah, he does kinda look like Eddie Izzard.

Liz: The guy with his shirt over his head? Somehow, he really does...even with his shirt over his head.

W, H, L (unison): We should turn around.

*This falls on deaf ears as Dad, who is driving, continues to concentrate on cussing through traffic, as well he should. We shortly turn into a lane that ends up being the exit for a parking deck, so we back all the way out of said lane with a car following us face-to-face, presumably exiting the parking deck. When the smoke clears, we're going the way we came. And Mystery Man is crossing the street beside us.*

Mom: He was wearing a yellow shirt like the landscaping crew up the hill. He's probably with them.

Chris: There he is. He's crossing the street.

L: Holy shit. It's him. It's him. Holy shit.

W: Stop. The car.

Okay, so some stuff went down before West and Hannah jumped out of the car to try and catch up with Mr. Izzard. But it mostly involved me learning things about myself, namely, that any illusions I might've had about staying cool in the face of fame are...inaccurate. At least we didn't react as badly as the car behind us -- also headed to the concert, also lost -- who were slowing down to ask the nice pedestrian crossing in front of them for directions, and upon realizing who he was, accidentally hit the gas instead of the brake. No wonder he hurried off.

So West and Hannah jump out and try to catch him to invite him to have dinner with us. Because that's what we do for celebrities here in the South. We run you over, chase you down on foot, and invite you for a Frisco Melt at the Steak 'N Shake. Unfortunately, he'd disappeared into the hotel before they could catch up to him. Who knows if that was really his hotel or if he just popped in to call 911.

House Blog

2008-06-21T09:50:00.000-07:00

Looks like we finally have a ballpark for how much our revised house plan will cost to dry in: about $60,000, possibly less. If the old rule of thumb holds true, we should be able to get into it lock and key (look at me throwing out the mad insider lingo) for about twice that. That, my friends, would actually be...drumroll please...within our budget. I realize there are a LOT of variables in there. For instance, I'm sure that "dry-in x 2" rule assumes that you don't go overboard on any of your finishing, which we probably will on a couple of things, like the wood windows (I'm not a fan of the look of vinyl, or the fact that universally, the color options offered are white and almond. Except one company we looked at had a Desert Sand option. Fancy, no? No.). On the other hand, we're taking on a significant chunk of the work entirely on our own, which might balance us back out. Or not. I've never once heard that story about the couple that built their beautiful, perfect, exactly-the-way-they-wanted-it dream home under budget. Or within budget, come to think of it. So in my grounded, completely realistic appraisal, we will obviously be the first.

Proving my Love

2008-04-05T07:42:00.000-07:00

I just gave my bird a shot. An injection. I don't think anything more need be said, but I'm going to anyway because I feel equal parts proud and kinda stupid, and I need to share that.

Casper has been sick. I will NOT go into the details here, because I'd have no way to undo the mental picture it would burn into your brain. I'll simply tell you that his illness has transformed us somehow into those crazy "animal people." The ones who take their pets to specialists in Birmingham and pay for invasive (read: expensive) surgery. He had to stay at the animal hospital (yes, animal hospital, not vet's office, nonononono...) for four days. On Thursday, the doctor called and said he thought it would help if we'd visit him. Visit. Him. In Birmingham.

So we did.

How can I explain this to you? I feel like my body chemistry has been altered in some way. I drove an hour-and-a-half to VISIT A BIRD. And then, and then, the very next day? West and I drove through a thunderstorm, tornado sirens wailing, to pick him up and bring him home. I mean, what the hell has happened to me? I don't even like him that much...unless you count that secretly I do.

I think it's that Casper's doctor had sort of a contagious attitude. I wish you could meet this man. I wish he were my doctor, despite the technicality that he's never practiced medicine on a human before. He would cure me with caring. When he told us we'd have to give Casper injections, he made me believe I could do it. I mean, I've never given anyone, or anything, a shot before. And to practice on something that you can't explain yourself to...you can't tell him to be still, you can't tell him you're not trying to kill him so he should reconsider clamping down on your thumb with the same razor beak he just used to crush an almond...it was just a little scary. But Dr. Atlas gave me confidence. And today, when I did it, I felt like I'd just climbed Mt. Everest. And then I kinda felt like an idiot for being so excited about it and for becoming such an animal-hugging freak. I've been sort of waffling between those emotions ever since.

Hello again, drawing board

2008-02-29T10:07:00.000-08:00

I apologize in advance if this becomes "house blog" for the next year or so. On the other hand, hey! I'm blogging! So go stuff your head with crackers! I don't wanna hear your bitching and moaning about how boring and technical Liz's blog is now that she's building her house because you can just go read somebody else's blog if you don't like it! Go to Cookie's blog, since you think she's SO FUNNY AND GREAT!

Hee.

Anyways, we finally heard back from our contractor. His estimate was that our house will cost about $WayTooMuch.50. Plus or minus. So we freaked out, threw up a few times, started frantically looking at completely different house plans, then took a few deep breaths and solved the problem. FYI, building up is way cheaper than building out, so if you ever design your own house, put your bedroom upstairs. Not only will you save lots of money, you'll keep those great-looking calf muscles for the next 50 years.

I remember some author (no idea which one) was talking about how to write a great book or something, and they said you have to be prepared to let go of your favorite thing for the good of the whole. Favorite sentence, plot point, character, whatever, everything has to be expendible if it doesn't fit (which, according to this person, happens every time). I'm sure this point has wider implications than just creative writing, but I can tell you for sure that it's been my experience with designing a house. Almost everything we originally loved about it is gone now, but overall, it's a much better design than what we started with. My only sticking point, however, is my secret door. I WILL HAVE A SECRET DOOR. I don't know who, in their right mind, would take the enormous time, energy, and emotional strain to design and build their own home and NOT put a secret door in there somewhere.

The Waiting Game

2008-02-18T08:22:00.001-08:00

When last you read of our intrepid heroes, they were moving in with their parents/in-laws to set the stage for the building of Chez Woodlayson (the "n" is silent).

After six months of being back with the fam, I can tell you objectively what works, and what doesn't work, about this situation.

PROS:

Better food.
Better beer.
More money (although, seeing as part of the point was to pay off debts super-fast, we haven't actually had more money, like, in our hands, smelling that wonderful way that money smells...until you handle it too long and the smell gets on your hands and then it just smells gross, like how food smells great until you throw it in the garbage can and then it's officially garbage and it suddenly smells awful).

CONS:

Full-size bed.
Increased CO2 levels resulting from breathing air that at least three other people have already breathed.
Let's just say it's generally a bit cramped.

All in all, I'd say the pros have outweighed the cons. However, I'm getting a little antsy. We had a perc test done two weeks ago and we've been waiting to get the paperwork back to give the Health Dept. We heard from them today, asking us to call the guys who did our land survey and give them permission to e-mail them the CAD file. So I call the surveyors and they were complete butt-heads about giving the perc guys the file. The lady was all, "They're just trying to get out of doing it themselves." And I'm thinking, why the hell would they do something themselves that you've already done? By all means, let's make them earn their keep by being needlessly redundant, then they can join the higher eschelons of the professional class in the company of doctors and lawyers.

We're also waiting on a bid/material list from a contractor who was supposed to get back with us about a month ago, but I don't take this personally at all. First of all, it was deer season. Second, the last thing I need is for the very first stages to go smoothly and give me a false sense of the level of insanity I should expect.

Cute. Very cute.

2007-11-01T09:19:00.001-07:00

So I'm at work, right, and I'm calculating occupational taxes for the month, and you don't have to know what that is or how it's done, just that it's stupid and complicated and in the year-and-a-half or so I've been doing it, there's always something that doesn't add up right and I have to spend a couple of hours figuring out what it is.

So I've got all my figures and I check them against what the computer came up with and lo, they match. And as I'm marveling at this fact and reaching over my head for the stapler to staple all the papers I've been filling out, I say to myself out loud, "Did something just go smoothly?"

At this exact moment, the stapler catches on the jar of paper clips that's sitting next to it, knocking it off the shelf and narrowly missing my head. It bounces off the desk, the lid comes off the jar, and paper clips go flying in a 10-foot arc across the office.

As if in answer to my question.

GASP

2007-10-26T06:04:00.000-07:00

Is Big League Chew supposed to be some kind of candy chewing tobacco?

Because I'm sure everyone in the whole world already knew that, but it has only just now occurred to me.

Moved

2007-08-01T08:25:00.000-07:00

I tend not to use this blog in the typical way. I write only when I feel like it and while I may occasionally feel a twinge of guilt about not keeping it current, I never intended for it to be a chronicle of important events or a daily journal or anything like that. Okay, so maybe I should blog at least once a month if I expect anyone to read it, but I actually DON'T expect anyone to read it and am consistently amazed that they do. So there ya go.

My point being, for some reason, I feel the need to chronicle this particular event, the closing of Chapter One of The Woodlayson Chronicles, the chapter we shall call "The Dreamplex." We lived in the Dreamplex for three years and one month, and we turn in the keys this afternoon.

I remember when I first set foot in there, literally. Chris and I had been looking for a place, but we figured the duplex would be a little small, plus both sides were more or less spoken for. Jaimie had formally laid claim to the A side, and Nathan had dibs on B. I think we'd been in Jaimie's side before, but we'd never seen the other side, which was in slightly rougher shape (some little matter of a fire in the front room), so we asked Kris and Laura if we could poke around, for curiosity's sake. The moment I stepped over the threshhold, I looked at Chris and said, "This is ours."

No joke. And if you'd seen the place then, you would've been pretty perplexed why the prospect of living there would be at all enticing. Did I mention the lovely charcoal ceiling? We just knew we were supposed to be there. Later on that day, Nathan called Kris and told him something had come up and he needed to stay put. The rest is history, which somehow brings us to today. After weeks of late nights, packing and sorting and storing and moving a little at a time, it's time for Chris and I to turn the lights out and lock the door on our first three years together. There hasn't been much in my life I was sure of, but I was sure about Chris, and Dreamplex, I was sure about you.

A recent conversation between spouses

2007-05-23T07:10:00.000-07:00

"I never said that."

"Oh-ho-ho, yes. Yes, you did."

"I did not say that."

"I remember these things."

Smirkish stare.

"I said I remember these things. I remember anything tied to a strong emotion, like hurt and betrayal."

"Great. Now if only we could get your keys and cell phone to offend you in some way."

Text message from Chris after an hour inside the East Gadsden Walmart

2007-05-11T16:08:00.000-07:00

"All hope is lost. No sign of help. Had to eat the crew. God help me! What have I done... What have I done?

Fin."

I think it was the "fin" that summoned silent film images of a French mime bailing water emphatically while discordant violins saw in the background. Who knew buying toilet paper could be so DRAMATIC.

Why can't it be more like Cheers?

2007-05-02T07:38:00.000-07:00

The Weepies are musical heroin. Thanks, K&L. I've been listening to them at work, at home, even leaving the CD on repeat overnight. I don't think they're all that weepy, really. Some of their songs are even...smiley. Chris took the CD to work and played it while they were setting up for an event, and the old guy Chris works with, Ted, liked it. I thought it was cool that a 70+ year-old liked "our" music, but then again, Ted's a pretty cool old guy.

In other reviews, Sam Adams Cream Stout gets two enthusiastic thumbs up.

I sang with the jazz band at Blackstone last night, like I do two Tuesdays a month, and I realized that I hug more people during those three hours every other week than I do during the 13 days in between. Or rather, they hug me. At first, I wasn't comfortable with it. It's not smarmy or anything, not usually anyway, because we generally don't attract the smarmy crowd. I'm just not used to it. I wanna be all, "Look, dude, I don't hug people I've known for ten years. I don't kiss my momma with this mouth, or any other mouth, 'cause I don't kiss my momma. I don't know you from Adam so the thing to do here if you must touch me would be a firm handshake."

I've been forced to give this attitude a lot of thought and decided that, at least in this particular setting, I need to loosen the hell up. After all, everyone else in the room has come to this social gathering place for fun, because they want to be there. I've come because they're paying me. I didn't come to meet new people or socialize or have a good time, but everybody else there did, so I might as well come prepared to be met, be socialized with, and pretend to have a good time. Who knows, maybe someday I actually will.

Psharight.

Shit and Plumbing

2007-04-02T07:09:00.000-07:00

I don't know if Chris's poo is especially dense or if I eat cork in my sleep, but he and I have had countless conversations about the differences in the properties of our poops, namely their seaworthiness. My poo tends to float, you see, and his sinks like some mammoth overladen barge that can be seen from space. Somehow, I come away from these conversations feeling like I'm some kind of freak for having buoyant shit. Chris has a knack for putting his opponent on the defensive and even though my rational mind tells me that lots of people have floating poo, when Chris points and laughs, the world is laughing with him.

Chris isn't really mean to me, of course, but the point is that even though I technically score as many debate points as he does around the Woodlayson house, he probably wins more subconscious battles. Why else would I be convinced that there's something wrong with the way I poop? Well, it also has to do with why it ever gets brought up in the first place. Chris goes to the bathroom, flips open the seat, and there's a perfect floating turd smiling up at him.

"Liz, your freaky floating poo didn't flush again."

"So re-flush, whiner."

"What for? It'll just escape and climb back out into the bowl."

"Are you honestly berating my shit for its survival instincts?"

So yeah, maybe my poo's floatiness causes some aggravation. On the other hand, Chris's shits are the only ones that ever clog the toilet. Maybe once in my life has anything that has ever come from my body been too much for a toilet to handle. Chris, however, has a sixth sense about it. He knows when not to even try to flush. Just leave the fan on, shut the door, and come back in an hour, because anything else will end in tears.

I'm not sure how we got started on Saturday talking about what I would do if I ever had to unclog the toilet, but for me it was a simple question to answer.

"That'll never happen."

"Why not? You'll never be responsible for clogging the toilet?"

"Oh, I get it. You think that because it's always you who clogs the toilet, it follows that that's why you always UNclog it. No, that's not it at all. It's because you're the dude. Shit is your domain. Shit and plumbing. Toilet clogs consist of shit AND plumbing, therefore falling indisputably in your realm."

"So you're telling me that if YOU clogged the toilet, you'd come get ME to fix it for you."

"Yes. Absolutely."

"Could this be because you don't know how to unclog a toilet?"

"Firstly, no, I don't know how to unclog a toilet...at least not in practice. Secondly, even if I did know how to unclog a toilet, which is admittedly a simple mechanical process, I would somehow make a horrific mess resembling the prom scene from Carrie out of the whole thing."

"Are you trying to tell me that girls are less capable of unclogging toilets than guys are?"

"No. All I'm saying is that there's no reason for me to be dealing with shit when I can get you to deal with the shit. Anyway, you should be thankful. I mean, it's the 21st Century. What other reason do women have to get married anymore? Shit and plumbing."

"Call me naive. I thought love had something to do with it."

"Sure it does. Love, shit, and plumbing. There. It's like the holy trinity of modern marriage."

"Can we at least say that the greatest of these is love?"

"Sure. Okay."

Hobbyist

2007-03-14T11:09:00.000-07:00

I'm going to knitting class tonight. I've become a bit of a "hobby person" lately. What with the Dungeons & Dragons, knitting, yoga, jazz singing, and most recently, late-night online gaming (if Myst: Uru Live counts as online gaming to you respectable gamers out there), I can now hold up my end of some of the most random conversations you'll ever overhear. After all, who else is going to reach out to the forgotten population of octogenarian hippie nerds? Who else, if not I?

It's probably good that I have several pastimes, because I'm one of those people who is highly susceptible to burnout. And I take my burnout seriously. When I get tired of something, I move right past disinterest and straight on into disgust. This is not something I particularly like about myself, especially since I didn't seem to inherit that free-spirited, devil-may-care personality that flaky people usually have to balance out the annoying bits.

I did meet a hobby once that I could've fallen in love with, but it got away. I was too young, then, and I didn't know what I had until it was gone. Spelunking. Isn't that a beautiful name? Except, it doesn't sound a damn thing like what it means. That always bothered me. Maybe that's what tore us apart.

Very Small Slices

2007-03-12T11:51:00.000-07:00

Just recently, I've started writing things down a lot. I used to keep journals in high school and college, never very consistently, but it was something I had an interest in doing. Archiving life. I haven't had that interest in a long time, but it's started back in little practical ways. For the past couple of weeks, I've taken notes at church, which I've always thought would be a good idea because it usually takes me all of ten minutes to forget about those interesting tidbits I was going to delve into later. Also, I bought this diet journal, because I've got these random physical ailments I've been wanting to keep up with. Nothing out of the ordinary, but it's come to my attention that I'm exceptionally bad at being aware of what's going on in my own body. I always knew that I was generally not a very observant person, but Chris was wondering if I had a brain tumor before I noticed my headaches were kinda frequent.

So far, I haven't had an impulse to do any real journaling. But I've missed this little pseudo-record and I'm flirting with the idea of bringing it back. We'll see.

We could be heroes

2006-09-08T10:39:00.000-07:00

The Fleegans were talking about superpowers today, as in what would be our super power if we had one. It got me thinking about Chris's uncanny ability to find things, or I should say, know where things are. Finding suggests looking, and he doesn't have to look. This ability of his seems to exist in full force 24 hours a day and have no correlation to his degree of alertness or even consciousness.

For example, this is a morning scenario not unheard of at the Woodlayson household:

Liz gets up and starts getting ready for work.

Chris's cellphone alarm goes off. It beeps about five times before there is any movement. Without opening his eyes, Chris reaches a hand to the nightstand and picks up the phone. "Huhluh?" Dial tone. He carefully places the receiver on the floor and reaches for the TV remote. "Huh? Hello?" Nothing.

Liz manages to crawl across the bedroom floor from the doorway where she has crumpled into muffled snickering and hands Chris his cellphone, without turning off the alarm, of course.

Chris presses every button on the phone like a sedated monkey until it stops beeping. In the time it takes Liz to catch her breath, he is snoring.

Liz continues getting ready and realizes she can't find her shoes.

"Hey Chris, do you remember where I put my shoes?"

"Huh? Oh, they're under the couch. You accidently kicked them under there last night."

"Thanks. Hey, how about my keys?"

"In your purse."

"No they're not. I already looked in my purse."

"Not the side pocket where you usually put them. In the big pocket where you keep your wallet."

"Oh, yeah, here they are."

"Told you."

"Well, I'm gone to work. Would you like a wake-up call in a little while?"

"No, those tomatoes went bad. We need to call a florist."

Paradigm Shift

2006-09-06T08:34:00.000-07:00

You may think I'm posting to commemorate the monthiversary (as the prefix "anno" is in this case obviously inappropriate) of my estrangement from that fickle harpy, the Internet. But in fact, I post for no occasion, and for no man, and reveal myself to be the fickle harpy. Some believe Inspiration to be an elusive muse, and probably bi-polar, as those artistic types tend to be. I know, however, that she is a garden in need of tending and that I have been letting the weeds strangle the vines. So I ask you to read this paragraph carefully and ask yourself: just how many mixed metaphors is too many?

I've been noticing something lately, about myself and -- although I haven't asked him about it out loud -- about Chris too. You twenty-somethings can tell me if you've experienced something similar. At some point I can't recall, our worldviews started to shift dramatically. I can best explain this with an example:

Before: I'd like to exercise more and eat better so I can be healthier, and thus improve the quality of my life.

After: I'd like to exercise more and eat better so I can be healthier, and thus be there for my family for as long as possible, in the process setting a good example for my children to follow so they'll learn to appreciate an active, healthy lifestyle.

Honestly, this is what goes through my head. Chris has talked about things like financial stability in terms of paving the way for the option of having a family.

My point here is not about the prospect of having kids. We're another three years away from even having that conversation. It's about this strange, gradual shift in the way we think. In the example I gave, it might seem like the shift has to do with becoming less selfish, but believe me, that's not it. I really don't know what it is. Voodoo. That's all I can think of. I don't want a family any more than I did yesterday, or the day before that. If my feelings about starting a family have changed, they have slowly shifted from revulsion to complete indifference, and I think that's the best I can expect from my underachieving biological clock.

They say that when you begin your life, you are unaware that other people exist and that their lives are as meaningful as yours. You have to learn things like empathy as part of the developmental process. Could it be that that part of human development never really resolves itself? Could it be that the crux of maturity is this expansion of one's definition of self? Could it be that I really need to take it easy on the caffeine?

Heat Retardation

2006-08-07T12:32:00.000-07:00

Every other blogger in the state of Alabama has mentioned it. I might as well.

My God, the HEAT! THE HEAT! NEED...WATER...aaaaaaaaagggggghhhhh

It's not so much that it's hot, but that there's absolutely no reprieve from the hot. It's hot at midnight. It's hot in the shade. It's hot in the rain, which, by the way, doesn't happen here anymore.

I started thinking about the heat (as if I ever stopped) when I noticed that even the most steadfast blogs I read are getting sketchier with their posting. That's not a criticism, mind you, as I have absolutely no room to talk, but an observation. I wonder if others are experiencing the same mental lag I am. I can only deduce that it has something to do with the heat. That is, I would deduce that, if I were able to deduce anything through the haze of puddling, thumb-sucking bald sun piercing brick and concrete, unchallenged by our meager ducts and vents.

Honestly, I feel stupid. I feel tired and slow and I can't form sentences or add numbers. It takes me forever to come up with clever descriptors, like "pretty" and "blue." Don't even ask me to splel anytheng for u.

Heist

2006-07-28T12:43:00.000-07:00

Over a month? I must've forgotten to set my alarm.

-----

My office used to be the control room of a recording studio, so I have this big window looking out into the next room. My brother's been working with the business this summer and he just now came into said room to pick up his check.

I heard the door open but no one came in. Then I saw West's head peaking around the corner. He tip-toed through the door and looked around to see if anyone was watching him, which, as he knew, I was. Then he stalked across the room toward his check, which was clipped onto the wall with his timesheet. He grabbed a sheet of paper lying on the ping pong table and carefully clipped it to the wall as a counter-weight, so he could nab his paycheck without setting off the weight sensors. After carefully sliding the check off the clip and pausing to see if he'd set off any alarms, he sighed in relief and slowly backed away. Halfway back to the door, he turned and went into a flat-out run for a clean getaway.

I laughed so hard.

-----

Last night we had sort of a girl's night over at Jaimie's house with meatless spaghetti and copious amounts of wine (or Jack & Coke, or both, depending on who you ask and whether or not they remember...anything). I stayed up until 2 a.m. on a Thursday night, because I'm still young and free and unconstrained by societal conventions like consciousness in the workplace. And because I can totally handle a four-hour sleep night without feeling old or crotchety or ill the next day. And also, I'm not a liar at all.

-----

I was at kottke earlier today and read this article he linked to about...well, it's sort of about the online community and also, other things. I'd try to give you the run-down but I'd just ruin it for you. In any case, I found it intensely interesting. The downsides are that it's kinda long and kinda heavy. But in my opinion, it's well worth the read.

Mother-F^$%ing Hot

2006-06-23T12:01:00.000-07:00

I knew when I wrote that last post that I would hear about it. Let me just inform you all: everyone, every single person who has called me in the last week has made some crack about how gracious I am to answer their call. And that...is true enough. I'm glad you finally appreciate what an honor it is to speak with me. Just be advised, it's been done.

On to other business. Like this damn drought. Let me tell you a story about the time Liz decided that it would be a good week to abandon her desk job in favor of a more challenging, stimulating, earthy task. Liz? Isn't here anymore.

I took this class a while back. Some people came and they taught me and several of my co-workers how to install landscape lighting, those pretty outdoor lights that make neat shadows on big fancy houses at night. This week, I got my first opportunity to actually install one of these systems, so I jumped at the chance. I thought about the insane hotness and dryness and miserableness of the weather we've been having lately, but, I thought, people work in hot weather every day. And I'm a people.

Anything you can do, I can do better. Yes, I can do anything better than you.

Things I learned about myself this week:
1. There is a limit to how much of God's unforgiving sun I can take, and I almost found out what it is.
2. I can't dig trenches. Digging trenches is so far past my capability as a human being that I do not even hope to aspire to one day become the kind of person who is able to dig a trench. At least, not in 105 degree weather through what may as well be concrete.
3. It is possible for me to fully appreciate the life-saving value of sunscreen and despise its existence at the same time.
4. You know what sucks worse than death? Working outside, all day, in the hot hot heat, never more than ten yards from the siren call of the most inviting swimming pool you've ever seen.
5. When I get really hot and miserable, I cuss a lot. I mean...like...A LOT.

There was this little vacuum snake thing that skulked along the floor and walls of the pool all day. Every now and then, it would walk up just above the water line and spit out some pool water. I remember praying to God that if He really loved me, He'd make that vacuum snake spit on me. I can't be sure, but I think that's the first time I've ever asked God to please make something spit on me.

Phone Phobia

2006-06-15T06:38:00.000-07:00

A few things.

First, Jaimie, you may think you're off the hook for that J. D. Robb book, but you're really not. I just don't want you to see it coming. *cough*NoraRoberts*cough*

Second, about the Ask Liz thing. I took an unscheduled break from Ask Liz this past week because I TOTALLY. FREAKING. FORGOT. I mean, completely. Didn't cross my mind. Jaimie asked me about it Monday night and I just blinked for a minute, as if I were some alien clone of the real Liz trying frantically to access one of the more obscure memories I downloaded from her unconscious brain. Boy did I think my cover was totally blown. But as it turns out, Liz forgets shit all the time, so the Earth friend just rolled her eyes and said, "Oh Liz."

Now, about the phone thing. I'm feeling especially candid today, so I'm going to tell you all about how much I hate phones. Cell phones, cordless phones, wall-mounted phones, phones with the curly wire thing, big phones, small phones, ear phones, micro phones...

People who haven't known me since way back sometimes have a hard time believing that I'm an introvert at my very core. I'm actually pretty proud of myself for overcoming some of the more crippling social drawbacks of that personality type, but in many ways, I'm still the posterchild. I write a hell of a lot better than I talk. I have a very few very close relationships as opposed to many acquaintances. I prefer smaller, more intimate social gatherings, and even though a great big party might sound like a lot of fun, when I get there, I'm exhausted in about 10 minutes. And as competent as I've had to become at talking to complete strangers in a friendly, outgoing manner, it wears me out. It sounds crazy, but I feel better after 30 minutes on the treadmill than I do after 5 minutes on the phone with someone I don't know, and I don't just mean psychologically.

This impairment even carries over into people that I do know but, for whatever reason, I'm not completely comfortable talking with. Maybe it's an acquaintance or maybe it's just someone I don't talk to on the phone much, even if I see them a lot in person. What it boils down to is that, as you all probably suspect by now, I ignore phone calls a lot. I'm working on it, and it doesn't mean I don't love you.

There is, however, a short list of numbers that I don't typically ignore. I started thinking about this when Jaimie said on the fleeganforum that I was hard to get in touch with, and I got all indignant and thought, "But I actually DO answer your calls. Do you have any idea what a step that is for me?"

You can leave out the comment where you point out I'm psychotic, Mr. Obvious.

Chris, Mom, Dad, West, Jaimie, Kris'n'Laura, and Mommie Ann (my grandmother). That's the short list of folks I never blow off, at least not without a good, sane, normal reason. There's other numbers that would probably fall into that category, including most other family members, but I'm only including those who call pretty frequently.

Calls I absolutely never answer include any number I don't recognize, even if it looks vaguely familiar. This often causes Chris fits. He doesn't have these phone issues and can't relate in the least to this particular quirk. He MUST KNOW the identity of the mysterious caller on the other end and can't fathom why I'm not in the least bit curious.

Calls that don't fall into either of those categories depend entirely too much on my mood. That's what I must apologize for to anyone who has been the victim of my phone-hate. Until I get that under control, you might try text messages, which for me, again with the preference for the written word, is more like opening a present.

Yard Sale!

2006-06-06T06:53:00.000-07:00

Chris and I took some crazy pills last week and decided to have a yard sale. Actually we'd planned it for the week before, but the Times forgot to run our ad the day before. That's what they said. They forgot. The lady I talked to said that isn't that just the funniest thing and of course she owes us a free day of advertising. Lady, first of all, no it is not just the funniest thing and second, if I wanted something from you it wouldn't be a free day of advertising in your yard sale section.

The whole first yard sale attempt last week was already going badly. Chris was supposed to have the day off, a very rare occurrence on a Saturday, so we planned it about a month in advance around this phenomenon. Then sometime early that week, he found out he was going to have to work that day after all, because another city building had a function scheduled and they just didn't feel like having it there. He'd be going in that afternoon, so we let our plans stand, but I felt bad that he would have to get up early on a day he normally got to sleep in, work until noonish, grab a sandwich, and run to his real job where he would work until sometime in the AM. I was already fuming over the injustice of the world when the ad thing came up, so we just put it off a week. At least that way, Chris would have more time to get mentally prepared for a 20-hour day of hell.

In the three days leading up to the yard sale, I think we did the most heavy lifting we've done since we moved into the Dreamplex. And then, at least, we could take our sweet time doing it. I try to think back on my childhood memories of yard sales, those pleasant thoughts burned into my brain during the crucial developmental years that I must have called on in deciding that this would be a fun way to spend a Saturday morning, and I don't remember that part.

The actual sale was pretty interesting. I've always been an informal student of sociology, so I found myself studying our patrons looking for patterns of behavior, social cross-sections, buying habits, etc. I could probably write a paper on it. There were high-brow junkers, middle-class hybrids (nice cars, bad teeth), affable conversationalists (they were my favorite because they bought more and because they tended to buy things no one else seemed interested in), and of course your subsistence buyers who, whether by birth or meth, you could tell they did all their shopping in this manner. We even had one family come by that I'm pretty sure had at least five generations of inbreeding under their belts. I've never actually met anyone whose family tree I knew went straight up, but don't you think you'd know a circus clown if you saw one, even if you'd never seen one before? There were two women, one who talked too fast to be remotely understood and had weird joints that didn't point exactly the right way, and one who was large and lumbering and didn't have ankles and I swear she looked just like an urRu. They had a boy with them who was high school age and obviously a bit slow. They rode around in a compact car with strange religisms hand-painted on the sides.

What I learned from the whole experience is that while yard sales can be profitable and mildly entertaining, the same can be said of selling your body for scientific experimentation, and that doesn't usually involve lifting large appliances.

Nose Issues

2006-06-01T09:21:00.000-07:00

I break a two-week silence to bring you this important update:

My nose itches.

Actually it doesn't itch so much as it just annoys. I can't stop messing with it. I told Chris I probably looked like a crack bunny. At first I thought I had something on it, some invisible film that had to be washed off. Then I remembered I first noticed it when I got out of the shower this morning, so it must be dry skin. Upon close examination, however, I find no evidence of alleged dry skin. After poking and prodding at my nose like a retard for several hours now, I think it may be numb. But it's hard to tell sometimes if it's numb. My office is like an ice box right now because our so-called "central air" only seems to care what the temperature is in the front of the building, so it's possible that the cold has numbed my nose and further clouded the issue, but it's also possible that my nose was numb to start with and I couldn't tell because it wasn't cold before and my nose has never gone numb before for any reason other than being cold.

Do any serious medical conditions manifest in the early stages with nose numbness?

If you see me today and I'm ceaselessly poking at my nose until I finally start trying to mash it inward with my thumbs in frustration, don't laugh. It's not funny. IT'S NOT FUNNY!

Christmas, Part II

2006-05-15T06:28:00.000-07:00

Mother's Day usually isn't so action-packed as it was yesterday. Or as exhausting. Maybe because it's usually preceded by a Saturday. Not that I'm complaining about Mother's Day. God knows those women deserve to be venerated. If not for whatever chemical imbalance led them all to procreate, none of us would be alive. It's widely regarded as the only constructive form of mass hysteria, although some have argued the contrary.

Not to belittle the occasion, but it's what you might call a minor holiday, as opposed to heavy hitters like Christmas and Thanksgiving. As an aside, have you noticed how the big holidays don't have "Day" in their titles? You can add the "Day", but it's totally unnecessary. It's as if to say, "Of course I'm a day...I'm The Day." Holidays that have to point out that they're a Day just end up looking like they have something to prove. Of course, holidays that omit the "Day" come off as pretentious. It's a lose-lose, really.

Right, my point is, why do holidays have to be so tiring? You're spending quality time with people you love. Okay, maybe not everybody has ideal relationships with their family, but there doesn't seem to be a correlation between the exhaustion levels of those who do and those who don't. Is it psychosomatic? An epidemic of codependence? Is it the shopping?

At the Drive-In

2006-05-08T09:26:00.000-07:00

Ever since Uncle David mentioned going to the drive-in a couple of weeks ago I've been dying to go. So when Chris had a rare Saturday off, we caught up on a week of house-cleaning and rewarded ourselves with a double-feature. Of course, there wasn't a great movie combo anywhere in the tri-state area, so we couldn't get anyone to go with us. We settled on Mission Impossible III and Silent Hill (which we'd already seen, so I felt safe watching it outdoors in the dark). The other screen of the drive-in was playing RV and American Haunting. This may not bother people who didn't have as many marketing classes as I did in college, but who the hell is their target audience? I mean, I can see maybe showing a scary movie, then a funny one to lighten the mood before you go home, which I still think would have a schizophrenic effect on the audience, but that pairing made no kind of sense to me.

On to what we did watch.

M:I-III-$%! : Do-Over

I found this MI installment to be more stressful than the other two (by the way, does anybody remember what happened in the second one?). But also, Tom was more crazy-looking, and crazy-acting, so that was fun. And his girlfriend did kinda look like Katie Holmes, although in certain scenes she looked exactly like Liv Tyler. Who she actually was, I don't know.

Silent Hill : Creep and Circumstance (May contain spoilers)

I liked SH the first time, and I'm glad we watched it again because this time we could discuss. I found it very discussable, which I like in a movie, especially a creepy one. It's funny because, at the theater the first time, these guys (I think they worked there?) asked us if we "got" the ending, and we were all, "Well yeah, we're not retarded." But then we stood outside afterward and talked about it and discovered that no one really got the ending. It's not that we lied to the guys. It's just that we all had our own ideas and when we laid them out, they all seemed equally plausible.

So the second time...I still didn't get the ending. But I reached new heights of not getting the ending and asked much more intelligent unanswered questions than I did the first time. Chris and I talked on the way home about the spiritual symbolism in the film (which you will probably point out originated with the game but I wouldn't know because I never played it).

Liz: You suppose they intentionally named the mom Rose and the daughter Sharon? They must've, right?

Chris: I wondered about that. Had to be. And then the dad's name is Christopher.

L: Yeah, because Christ is going after the Rose of Sharon and blah blah. But he can't get to them because they're in limbo? And of course the eternal fire thing underneath, well, I won't dignify that one.

C: And then there's the false prophetess, Christabella.

L: Everybody wants to be the Son of God. I don't get that. I sure wouldn't. At the risk of sounding anti-feminist, it's probably important that she's a woman.

C: Betty Friedan just rolled over.

L: Is she dead?

C: Yeah, here just a while back.

L: Huh. Well anyway, it's just symbolically important that she's a woman, because, be it arbitrary or no, the whole Trinity has always been described in masculine terms. So a female Christ is a usurper, an obvious imposter, and the others are responsible for not seeing it.

C: Hm.

Our drive continued like this until it inevitably degraded into silliness.

Liz: What about the name of the town? Silent Hill? How is that significant?

Chris: Well, it's creepy.

L: Yeah, you couldn't just name it anything I guess. Not many towns would make good ghost towns.

C: Yeah, I mean, we know that Attalla is creepy, but who would be afraid to go to "Attalla"?

L: Hee. Piedmont. Nobody goes to Piedmont.

C: The roads don't go through Ohatchee anymore.

L: We'll deal with Foley. You just let it rest in peace.

Maybe you had to be there.

Big Girl Pants

2006-04-26T10:45:00.000-07:00

Maybe I shouldn't air my money troubles on the Internet. Many people seem to think that subject is "private". Well, I think my sex life and reproductive tendencies are private, but others don't seem to. So I'm going to talk about money.

NO! I'm not pregnant.

Chris and I have been married for going on two years. We are already over $30,000.00 in debt. Debt haunts me. We hates it.

Now, a lot of that is student loans, and that's not really real debt. But then there's the car we bought when Chris's crapped out. Why we didn't roll it down a hill into a tree and collect the insurance on it, I don't know. I guess 'cause that would be wrong. And because we'd have to kill the mechanic to cover our tracks, and he's a pretty nice guy.

And of course there's credit card debt, which we haven't tackled yet. We're waiting until after we've assassinated an insanely high-interest "supplemental loan" Chris got for school. A word of advice: Say NO to Sallie Mae.

To top that all off, Chris had to have two root canals. Two. That shit's bad enough without having to worry about how you'll pay for it, or why exactly you should pay for someone to drill holes into your teeth. Gitmo must be rolling in it. Anyway, the root canals were performed about a month apart, and we still haven't gotten the bill for the first one. Another thing we hates is suspense.

Oy, being a grown-up sucks. Just had to vent. Better now. On the bright side, we've never made a late payment and we've never had to beg for money, so we must be doing something right. Either that or God has some plan for us that doesn't involve debtor's court. My money's on the God thing.

Ask Liz

2006-04-24T05:51:00.000-07:00

Just when I said I had nothing to give. I'm so full of it.

And to prove it, I have an online advice column for your perverse pleasure! Every Sunday, I will be contributing my wisdom to Fleegan Central in the form of snide, snarky, bad advice. And in answer to your next question, yes, I do take your question submissions. Please limit two per week, as I have a day job (I'm looking at you, David).

That's not to say I won't be posting here. Only God knows whether or not I'll be posting here.

Hiatus

2006-04-21T08:40:00.000-07:00

It has now been five weeks since my last post.

It has been three weeks since I have read a single post from anyone else...including derfleeganforum.

What's up with that? I tell you, I have no idea. I have nothing left to give the Internet right now. Just know that all is well and that you should probably stop checking this thing every day until further notice. Unless you have nothing better to do. To each his own, I guess. Trespassers will not be shot.

Randoms

2006-03-07T08:14:00.000-08:00

Chris and I will both be 25 this month. He hits the quarter-century mark twelve days before I do. What a codger. I'm throwing him a party this weekend and can you believe he wants to cook for it? Well yes, I'm sure you can.

Last Friday, my band was playing a gig at Country Club until 8pm. I made them do an instrumental for the last song so I could rush off and join my comrades for The Moxie's grand opening. I caught the tail end of the festivities and the last sip of that weird effervescent wine. The place looks killer. I'm going to have to start saving up to get my hair done there before I do something drastic involving two mirrors and a pair of kitchen shears.

My jazz band got offered a recording contract yesterday by a studio that's been giving us free recording time. I mean...what? I'm not a dumbass, okay? I've seen every episode of Behind the Music. Just when it was starting to get really fun, these people want to turn it into a profession. Did you guys know that there are special lawyers that do nothing but negotiate recording contracts? I mean, of course there are, but I've never thought of it before.

Year of the babies, indeed.

2006-02-28T11:06:00.000-08:00

No, I'm not pregnant.

STOP ASKING.

It annoys me. I don't know why. Maybe because people don't really ask. They look at you as if they know and what follows is usually a loud outburst of maternal enthusiasm, after which some crowd control is usually necessary to prevent the wildfire of rumors that could culminate from the cigarette butt of whatever stupid allusion to motherhood you unintentionally uttered.

That's neither here nor there. I just had to let it out. No, you see, every year has a theme. There was the wedding year and the new house year and...I dunno, doctorate year or something. This year is baby year. I think Laura called it first. She has a post listing all the expectant or recently post-expectant mothers we know, but I'm too lazy to go find it.

The reason this preoccupies me today is that I fear God is trying to trick me into getting pregnant. I'm tempted to shake my fist in the air and tell Him it'll never work, but then He'd just cheat and do the whole immaculate conception thing just for spite.

Wal-Mart is holding my birth control for ransom. I'm a Sunday starter, people. It's Tuesday. AFTERNOON.

See, I've known all month that my prescription was due to expire sometime soon, which is why I've been trying for weeks to get an appointment with the lady doctor. Why can't I accomplish this? Because my doctor is booked up? No, I don't have "a" doctor. I just ask for first available. I know most women have preferences about that kind of thing, but the way I see it, it's going to be one of the most mortifying, undignified, uncomfortable experiences you have to look forward to every year, no matter whose hands are doing the walking.

I digress. I couldn't get an appointment because, and I quote, "Our computers are down. Call back in a few days."

Your computers are down? Is your pen out of ink too? Poor you.

I called three times in two weeks trying to convince them to take my money so they can violate me. Their computers were down. So, the time came for my trip to the pharmacy and lo and behold, my prescription had expired.

This was Saturday. Nothing to be done until my doctor stumbles into his office sometime around 2pm on Monday. So I called my pharmacy first thing on Monday to see if they'd gotten in touch with my doctor. No, they hadn't, and it might actually be quicker if I tried calling myself. Fine. I called my doctor's office and they said they'd handle it. Fine. I called my pharmacy around lunch to see if I could pick it up yet. Still no word from my doctor. Fine. I called his office back to get an ETA. Sometime around 5pm, they'd make sure and call so I could pick it up that night. Fine. I go to the pharmacy that evening to pick up my prescription, where I find out that my doctor's office never called them, nor did they ever get around to calling him.

FINE.

This morning, I spent over an hour calling my pharmacy, then my doctor, then my pharmacy, then my doctor, then my pharmacy. Apparently, they're mad at each other. The pharmacist must be shtooping the doctor's wife or something. Well guys, it could be worse. SHE COULD BE PREGNANT. BUT I'M SURE SHE'S NOT BECAUSE SHE'S PROBABLY TAKING MY BIRTH CONTROL PILLS. Bitch.

The last call I made to my pharmacy this morning was mostly begging for them to please, for the love of God, please break the wall of silence and call my doctor. They said they would call and to check back before they went to lunch to see if my prescription was ready.

I just checked back in to find that sadly, my pharmacy was unable to reach my doctor's office, the same one I've called half a dozen times in the last two days. But they're sure everything will be cleared up by this evening. Well, sing me a song and call me Henry, because I think I've heard this verse before.

Next week, Liz develops a hormonal imbalance! Will she get her birth control in time, or will she begin inexplicably crying at the sight of a pineapple? Tune in and find out.

Exercises in Humility

2006-02-15T08:54:00.000-08:00

Hope everyone had a lovely VD. Jaimie's fleegan dumped her last night to go to his niece's basketball game, and my husband dumped me to go to work. How lame are they? Good thing Jaimie and I don't believe in Valentine's Day.

So as not to be total humbugs, we went on a date without the guys. TUESDAY NIGHT BOWLING WITH THE LUTHERANS!!! YOW!

Bowling with the Lutherans is so much fun. We drink and cuss and bowl. Except not all Lutherans cuss. One sweet old lady on our team would say "BAD WORD!" everytime she wasn't happy with her roll. It made me giggle.

I learned something about myself last night, bowling with Lutherans, that I'd like to share: I have no luck. I am luckless, for better or for worse.

We bowled two games, and my scores, respectively, were 72 and 45. The first is bad enough, but the second is shockingly bad. People's eyes got wide when I told them. I felt like they were going to put my picture on the wall next to the people who've bowled perfect 300s, because my achievement warranted recognition as well.

There was this lane beside ours with a bunch of high school kids playing, most of which were not what you might call proficient bowlers. One guy bowled like he thought the gutter was the target. Watching them over the course of the night, I noticed something. No matter how bad they were, they made a decent shot at least one time in four. Most of them had scored at least one strike by the end of the night. In the two times I've bowled with the Lutherans, four games total, I've scored exactly one spare and no strikes. This, I have decided, is because I have absolutely no luck.

That's not at all a bad thing from a certain point of view. Those kids beside me had luck, like most people do. They had good luck and bad luck. I have neither. I can't think of anything in particular about myself and my life to make me believe that anything terribly unlucky has ever happened to me. Lots of bad things have happened, of course, but not unlucky things. No flukes, abberations, or tragedies of fate. Which brings us to good luck.

Let's take bowling. I know nothing about bowling technique, the feel of the ball, the right throw, what weight I should be using, any of that. So, is it bad luck that I bowled four zero frames in one game? No. It stands to reason. It displays, rather, an exceptional lack of good luck. Some kind of good luck would have to be involved for me to do well in any endeavor for which I am so poorly equipped.

The way I'll interpret this is that in most things, I'll get no tip of the scales in either direction based on any unfair influence of fate. I can handle that. I'll work on my bowling skills and eventually get better, knowing that while I may never acheive an undeserved strike, I'll also never blow the big game.

Memed

2006-02-14T07:56:00.000-08:00

Laura invoked the tag (albeit a week ago). I am it.

By the way, happy Valentine's. If you're into that.

Four jobs I've had

1. Newspaper desk clerk/obituary writer
2. TV production studio writer/director/producer/editor/talent/grip/chode
3. Art museum graphic artist/receptionist/tech support/carpenter
4. Family business Girl Friday

I never was happy with just one hat.

Four movies I can watch over and over

1. The Fifth Element (Why do I love that movie? I really shouldn't. But oh, how I do.)
2. Any Jack Ryan movie (Um, except that one with Ben Affleck. Nothing wrong with it, just not the same.)
3. The Pelican Brief
4. Boondock Saints

Four places I have lived

This may strike some of you as sad, others as endearingly old-fashioned, but I don't move around a lot.

1. The trailer my family lived in when I was 3 months old
2. The house I lived in with my family (about 2 miles away from the trailer) from ages 1-23
3. The dorm room I where I sort of stayed my first semester in college
4. The downtown dreamplex

The dorm room wins the prize for Farthest Distance from Birthplace, coming in at a whopping 25 miles. It may be disqualified, however, since I'm not quite sure "having a place nearby to crash two nights a week" is the same as living there.

Four TV shows I love

I think I've mentioned that I go through TV phases in life. I'll go months forgetting that there is a thing called television which exists to entertain me. I kind of prefer these phases. I get a lot more done. Then there are other times, times like now, that when I sit down on the couch, I am compelled by some deep-seeded conditioning to turn on the TV and keep it on for the rest of the day. I don't even have to be watching it. It just has to be ON. I think there's a mind-controlling gnome in Chris's TV. I knew we should've used mine.

Anyway, even in times like these when I can't seem to have enough mind-numbing entertainment, I've never had a lot of regular shows. Sure, I'll get obsessed with one, maybe two shows at a time and that's cool. It doesn't cut into my schedule too bad. But it's funny you should ask about shows I love at this time in my life because I'm telling you, all of a sudden, there are millions. That's a slight exaggeration, but let me just say I'm hard-pressed to pick four. And for me, that seems like MILLIONS. I have chosen multi-genre representation as my method of selection.

1. Drama: Medium (Can Jake Weber be my TV boyfriend?)
2. Sci-Fi: Battlestar Galactica (If you're not already watching this, don't start. You'll sleep better.)
3. Comedy: Family Guy
4. Animated: Boondocks

I realize there's some overlap with the Comedy and Animated categories, but I rationalize it by saying that the fact that Family Guy is animated is itself a comedic device. And Boondocks, although funny, can certainly be appreciated from a purely aesthetic point of view.

Four TV shows I hear I should be watching, but as yet am not

I picked up this extra category from kottke.

1. Lost
2. Veronica Mars
3. American Idol (Could 37% of the viewing public be wrong?)
4. 24

I almost listed Six Feet Under, but I don't subscribe to HBO or Netflix, so I see myself as having insufficient opportunity to have brazenly ignored this one.

Four places I have vacationed

I choose to exclude cruise destinations, because I vacationed on the boat. The destinations were more like beer runs.

1. Santana Maya, Central Mexico
2. Savannah, Georgia
3. Chattanooga, Tennessee
4. Just about everywhere in Florida that's not a retirement community or the restricted area of an airforce base

Four of my favorite dishes

1. Chris's Greek chicken pitas with cucumber sauce
2. Santa Fe soup
3. Anything with noodles
4. Cheeseburger Macaroni Hamburger Helper

Four sites I visit daily

1. www.google.com
2. www.fleegan.com
3. www.dooce.com
4. Any random combination of the other links you see to your right

Four places I would rather be right now

1. Camping at Horse Pens 40
2. Watching a really awesome meteor shower
3. In bed
4. Someplace where it still snows

Four people I am tagging

Sharight.

Quitting

2006-02-08T07:33:00.000-08:00

Chris is kicking the camel. As in The Camel. As in soft-pack menthol filters. It is now Day 2.

Pray for him. Also, pray for me. If you've ever "been there" for someone who's detoxing, you'll know you should pray for me more. I kid. Sort of.

Jaimie, just so you know, that's why we didn't go bowling last night. We both really wanted to, and we both thought it would probably be a bad idea to subject him to a dozen chain-smoking Lutherans at this juncture.

Chris's mom gave him some Nicorette for Christmas, and he'd wanted to quit for a long time anyway. I was all for it because I want him to live a really long time, and because he has annoyingly expensive taste in cigarettes. Why can't he just be a Marlboro-smoking redneck like the rest of us? Anyway, we had the cruise coming up and that just wouldn't do, and then he had a particularly difficult group to deal with at work. While I'm sure there's no good time to quit, he thought things might calm down enough by this week to give him a little more of an edge.

Things don't ever really calm down, do they? I'm sure it could've been worse, but have you ever tried car-shopping and/or groveling for a bank loan while kicking a 12-year-old smoking habit? It sucks. Then again, so does blinking.

Milestones

2006-02-06T06:21:00.000-08:00

Carrie Married - There's some reason that those words rhyme which goes beyond the natural. My cousin is one of those people whose destiny and primary ambition it has always been to start a family. Her wedding was two Saturdays ago. I was the matron of honor.

I should explain that when children of our clan get married, they have a choice to make in regards to their representative maids. Two roads diverge in a wood, as it were. There are five of us cousins who are, shall we say, birthing age, and we're all pretty close. So when one of us gets married, it just makes good sense for the other four of us to stand up there and look pretty. Four is a good number; not too many, not too few. The choice comes when one of the brides has other friends that she would also like to have in the wedding. You can't have just one friend-maid, because she'd have to hang out with a bunch of cousins who've known each other all their lives and probably don't know her from Adam. Wouldn't be fair to her. So you'd have to have at least two friend-maids, which now brings your total to six or more. For a family which seems to prefer smaller weddings, this will not do. Also, how many guys do you know who could come up with six groomsmen? We're also into symmetry.

When I got married, I went the friend route. It was a small, outdoor, informal wedding and even four seemed a bit much. I had a matron of honor and a maid of honor and that was it. As a sidenote, I also find it interesting that two of the cousins are married now and neither of us saw fit to designate any attendants as simply "bridesmaids". Equality for all. Hm.

Carrie went with the pre-packaged family plan, and it was a lot of fun. I always wondered if she would turn out to be a bridezilla, but that wasn't the case at all. It was just a good time, even after ten hours in heels. She even gets bonus points for not freaking out when she got mud on her satin wedding shoes.

That makes two down, three to go in our quintuplet of cousinly couples, and all smooth sailing so far. Another interesting tidbit: so far, we're getting married in birth order.

Am I in trouble?

2006-01-20T10:58:00.000-08:00

I just blew off a lunch date with friends with no notice to go to some silly work meeting. Oops. I actually had no concept of the fact that we were all working right through lunch until it was over and I glanced up at the clock. It said "12:45 you friendless bitch". Seriously, that's what the clock said. I would've been offended if I hadn't been so impressed. Anyway, sorry guys. Next time.

I've been holding off on my vacation review until I got my pictures uploaded, but considering their sheer numbers and the fact that I will probably have to go through them as anally as possible, weeding through them, discarding the ones where someone walked by the lens or the many nighttime shots I attempted without a tripod -- and then there's the editing process, deblurring and sharpening and color correcting -- little Woodlaysons will probably come along first.

The Rundown:

Royal Caribbean - Better than Carnival insofar as you don't feel like a refugee family of Irish Catholics when reclining in the top bunk of your "cabin". It also got points for not trying to pack 4000 people in a 6000 sq. ft. boat. One of my most vivid memories from cruising Carnival was a 10 foot square pool, dotted with algae, with about 20 kids crammed into it, all trying their damnedest to look like they were having fun and avoid inadvertantly losing their virginity. The RC pools were spacious, clean, and didn't smell like the ocean. The only suggestion I have for anyone thinking of vacationing on the RC is this: Drop the notion altogether that cruises are "all-inclusive". Just don't think about it in those terms. You won't feel quite so cheated everytime you find out that you have to pay $3.00 for a Coke, and that you owe five different waiters a tip and you've only ever met two of them, and that you'll get charged $1.00 for every fingerprint they find on the minibar. If you're on a budget, just don't cruise. Just don't.

Cococay - First stop. Kinda sucked. But if you get off the beaten path, there's some pretty inter-island trails. I found a cave there, and if I ever go back, I'm bringing my spelunking gear. Pay for an excursion? Thank you, I'll make my own fun.

St. John - Beautiful island, weird vibe. It's one of those places where, on one side of the street, there will be this ostentatious mansion, and on the other side, there's a driftwood shack with half a roof. There is a literal hierarchy here, considering the whole place is basically a mountain sitting in the middle of the ocean. The rich people look down on the poor people. Every cliche you can think of, you can go to St. John's and take a picture of it. Upper class, middle class, lower class. Upper island, middle island, lower island. It's just creepy.

St. Maarten - We are not in Kansas anymore, and I freakin' love it. This place was just awesome. I don't know how this place got so cool, but I'm sure it has something to do with the fact that it is the smallest freestanding parcel of land to be divided between two coutries. It's half French and half Dutch. The personality of the place is a pretty uniform blend of the two cultures, although they still bicker about whose system of local government is better. They're all islanders at heart. I may never again run into so many friendly people with French accents. I'm going to write France a letter and tell them how much more becoming it is. St. Maarten goes on my list of places I must return to before I die. I could see myself going native there.

Tonight on ER

2006-01-19T07:03:00.000-08:00

Two relatives of mine went to the emergency room yesterday, in two completely separate, dangerously serious, incidents.

My cousin-in-law had a head-on collision with a kid who was apparently still new to traffic laws. He broke three ribs and tore up his knee, but the doctors say he'll be okay. The kid came out without a scratch, but I think he would've preferred it the other way around.

For a few days, my uncle has had some sort of bite on his forehead that was starting to look like it came from something with venom. He wasn't going to go to the doctor, but I guess he woke up yesterday and decided it was bad enough to get checked out. The doc prescribed him an antibiotic. Within minutes of taking it, he started experiencing hearing loss and difficulty breathing. I don't know how bad it was, but it was bad enough to haul him to the ER in an ambulance. Doesn't that just figure. He's okay too, but I doubt he'll seek medical attention next time.

Our family was being watched over yesterday.

On a lighter note, the rest of the day was nice and peaceful. Chris and I got to sit down for about the first time since we got back. We watched Part 2 of the Battlestar Galactica episode that left us hanging before we left (the cruise got off to a pretty bad start when I found we didn't get Sci-Fi in our cabin). I took a long, hot shower, to my great relief, and yours also, I'm sure. Despite the craziness, it's good to be home.

I'm not dead. Yet.

2006-01-18T11:31:00.000-08:00

For those of you who didn't know, I've been out of town. Way, way out of town. Tell you all about it when I have more than 15 seconds.

For those of you who did know, I'm getting the evil eye because you know I've been back since Sunday night and haven't blogged. All I have to say is this: I also haven't showered.

Seriously.

I'm not kidding.

A combination of jetlag, work, impromptu obligations, and lots and lots of laundry have kept me far from having time for anything but sleep. So count your blessings and kiss my ass. Don't worry, that's the coffee talking.

Vacations are great, aren't they? But Liz learned a lesson: If you come back on Sunday, you're not going to be worth a shit on Monday anyway, so save yourself the trouble of spending all day trying to remember what you were just doing, what you were just saying, and where you laid your damn pen, and take the day off.

Smooth sailing?

2006-01-03T13:51:00.000-08:00

I had the lamest New Year ever. Well, ever for me. I'm sure someone out there has had a lamer New Year than me, but I don't know this person, and if I did, I probably wouldn't talk to him because he'd be so lame. Anyways, I was all psyched up to go to this party at a friend's house (a friend's new house that I've never seen because I'm a bad friend). Actually I had four different options for New Years: friend's house, brother's kick-ass party (complete with Moon Walk), church party, and visiting Chris at work around midnight. About 3 p.m., I came down with one of those kick-in-the-ass dizzying vomitous headaches I get sometimes and I don't think I lasted past 9. I sat at home and tried to find something to stare at that didn't hurt and took enough Tylenol PM to knock out a baby elephant, or a good-sized cow (provided they had my constitution, which is nil...on the bright side, I don't foresee ever needing a prescription sedative).

So that's how my year began. Comatose.

This will be the year that I either learn to be less of a flake or die of frustration over my aptitude for losing things and forgetting things in direct proportion to their value, importance, or urgency.

This will be the year Chris and I decide our financial future, in terms of whether we set ourselves up for eventual solvency or eventual bankruptcy.

This will be the year I either apply myself to truly learning the art of the iron, or Chris finally gives up and starts sending everything to a dry cleaner. This should have some direct effect on our aforementioned financial future.

This will be the year I decide whether to be a company man or a free agent.

This will be the year I either decide to live a healthier, more active life, or decide to quit caring and rot away slowly like the other 70 percent of America's population.

This will be the year I decide to live by the Spirit or the Flesh.

This will be the year we start making decisions about our lives, or the year we decide to put them off for another year.

I wish I could speak with any certainty or authority on these topics, but most of the time, these things get decided for you along the path of least resistance. I shudder to think where that will take me.

Merry Christmas to all

2005-12-27T06:55:00.000-08:00

This is the first Christmas I think I've ever had to recover from. You may think that strange, because from what I hear, most people need about a week of bed rest and warm liquids after the holidays. But all I can say is that I've had a lovely, extended childhood wherein every Christmas has been a magical wonderland of bliss, fun, togetherness, and spoils. Until now. So happy birthday to me, I'm finally a grown-up who can give the holiday season the respectful dread it deserves.

Nevertheless, it was a good Christmas. I'll always look forward to family events because I get to see my out-of-town cousins, who were my best friends growing up and with whom I have miraculously managed to remain very close, despite the fact that until recently, they lived six hours away. We're all a shameless bunch of overachievers and as such, we're always busy. But the one thing there is always time for -- or else -- is a family gathering.

Total Christmas events attended in the span of two days: 7

Total number of iPods distributed: 3

Total number of diamonds I received from my husband who knows I don't like diamonds but somehow knew there was enough of a girl inside me screaming to get out that I'd like these: 7

Total last-minute visits to Walmart: 4 (5 if you count the time we had to go back for something after walking all the way back to the car, which, if you've ever been to the East Gadsden SuperWalmart on Christmas Eve Eve, you'll know is a long walk indeed)

Love Song to a Wage Hour Technician

2005-12-14T09:34:00.000-08:00

I don't know why I feel the need to mention this, but I haven't read any blogs in over a week. Know what that means? It means there's enough new blog material out there to last me ALL DAY AND ALL NIGHT. It kind of feels like a Christmas gift, and it's sitting there for me to open whenever I want. Or, whenever I have time, which is why I delayed gratification in the first place. I might start doing it on purpose from now on though, just to have something to look forward to all the time.

By the way, I'm still on hold. I think my Wage Hour Technician has taken an early lunch. Thank you, Wage Hour Technician! You're the reason I have time to read blogs today!

I'm on hold...

2005-12-14T09:01:00.000-08:00

as we speak.

I'm calling a government agency. This would suck, except for the fact that I keep getting tickled over this one thing. See, everybody at this office does this cute thing where they record their name (or job title, if they're not important enough) in their own voice. I'm sure they thought it was a great way to make their boring beaurocratic phone directory a little more personal. The person I'm trying to reach is someone called the Wage Hour Technician, and when she recorded her job title (because she's not important enough to have a name), she left a big long pause at the end. Now, when you're on hold at this office, they have a recording loop that starts with that little personal recording of the name of the person you're waiting on. It goes on to say that they're busy. Like so:

"[Personal recording] Wage Hour Technician... [/PR] is still busy. You are number 2 in line...

Then they play some music for a while and a calm voice reassures you that they haven't forgotten about you.

Here's what happened when I heard this loop the first couple of times:

Recording: "Wage Hour Technician..."

Me: Hi, I have a question about...

Recording: ...is still busy. You are number 2 in line.

Me: D'oh!

[Music...calm voice...]

Rec: "Wage Hour Technician..."

Me: Hi, I, uh...

Rec: ...is still busy. You are number 2 in line.

Me: Oh for the love.

[Music...calm voice...]

Rec: "Wage Hour Technician..."

Me: ...

Rec: ...is still busy...

Me: HA!

The thing is (and I am still on hold), I have been through this loop now at least twenty times, and each time I hear "Wage Hour Technician", I have to pause and give her a chance to say, "May I help you?" Then, when she doesn't, I feel like an idiot all over again.

This is getting pissy. But at least I'm number 1 in line now. Actually, I've been number 1 in line for the last 10 minutes. I hate the government.

Hear that, Bro? I hate the government. C'mon, bitch, arrest me. ARREST ME!

HOMOCIDAL

2005-12-12T08:53:00.000-08:00

YOU HAVE BEEN DULY WARNED. THE NEXT PERSON I SEE WILL BE KILLED. DON'T WIN THAT LOTTERY. IF YOU ARE READING THIS, YOU ARE PROBABLY MY GOOD FRIEND THAT I DON'T WANT TO KILL SO PLEASE DO NOT SPEAK TO ME, VISIT ME, OR DRIVE PAST ME.

ALSO, PRAY FOR MY UNSUSPECTING HUSBAND.

THAT IS ALL.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

RIGHT. THAT IS ALL.

Actually, if I may pass on some wisdom I have garnered by experience: Frustration with electronic equipment and three cups of coffee are unmixy things. Be advised.

That is all. Really.

Performance Anxiety

2005-12-07T19:14:00.000-08:00

I was on my way home from work tonight and I remembered I needed to call someone. The someone didn't answer so I had to leave a message. Some people just don't have trouble with this. But we all have different strengths and weaknesses, and one of my weaknesses has always been hyper-awareness of any actions that cannot be undone. Namely, my voice, sounding stupid, recorded for posterity.

This is what got me thinking about all the things we stress out about in life, which for me would be a very long list. I read an article in a trade magazine where a guy said, "Stress is a decision. It's something you can decide not to indulge." Has anyone ever said something like that to you and your gut reaction was, "Well, thank you O Wise One. I am just doing this for my health, of course, but I'll just decide not to anymore and that will be that."? Because that's what I said.

But when I think about it now, I can honestly think of several things I've decided not to stress out about. For instance, how many countless times have I been on a stage in front of lots of people singing and strumming my guitar? Enough times that I am no longer obliged to chew my fingernails off in agonized anticipation. How many business calls have I had to make? Enough to be confident I can achieve professionalism that doesn't sound faked, much as I still feel like it is. How many times have I run a mile? Enough to be sure that I can do it as long as I keep moving and keep breathing. God, what I would give to have known that on Presidential Physical Fitness Week in high school.

So that's where my brain was on my way home tonight. Kind of encouraging, I thought.

Happy Blogidays

2005-11-28T07:23:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving always bears mentioning I suppose.

I've heard so many different accounts of what people did on Thanksgiving, how much they did or did not enjoy it, the gammut of emotional impact it had. Holidays don't always affect people in the way you expect.

Especially upon reading about other people's holidays, it hits me how much I have to appreciate about mine. For starters, it's huge. That's not an inherently good thing, but I'll tell you why it's huge. It's not because we've all had a bunch of kids or made any effort to carry on the family name in spite of the fact that we're notorious for birthing slews of girls. It's because we never leave a man behind. Honestly, I still have cousins that I count among my best friends. Some of them live in other states and they all have boyfriends (or husbands) and jobs and school and completely separate lives. And we all come together anyway, sometimes for family gatherings, sometimes for the hell of it, because not only do we all love each other, we pretty much all like each other. I used to think that that's just how families worked. The more I learn about how the 21st Century family is supposed to function, the more I thank God for mine.

Don't get me wrong. Thanksgiving was exhausting. There were many moments I wanted to be somewhere else. There were people I rolled my eyes at when they said something that was so very much like something they would say. But when I see groups of people all over the place enjoying each others' company just as they would if they weren't required to be there, it takes me down a peg. Who am I to wish for something any better than this?

I guess that's what well-meaning people mean when they try to cheer you up by saying something stupid like, "Count your blessings." Next time one of my aunts pisses me off, I'm going to try to remember what I said here.

The Weekly

2005-11-21T06:27:00.000-08:00

Because, maybe I should just call it what it is, right? Then, if I blog more than once a week, it's like this nice surprise. Like, ice cream. Like, cherries. As opposed to the crushing disappointment of coming here daily and seeing nothing new and wondering, "Will she ever come back? Is she dead? SHANE!"

Okay, maybe not crushing disappointment. After all, the rule of thumb is that nobody really cares about what happened to you today except you. However, if you're still reading this self-indulgent tripe, you must care a little bit...which makes you kinda weird.

But enough about you. Guess what I did last week?

First of all, I think I got stopped at that same roadblock that Jaimie did. Was it Sutton Bridge Road on Saturday night? My cop was nice and didn't ask me to step out of the vehicle, like that last time. Of course, this time I'd remembered to put my proof of insurance in my visor, instead of in the same glove box where I keep my .44. That always helps.

But I have another story for you today, an uplifting tale of hope and the domination of the human spirit over the evils of college radio.

You see, I was driving home from a very long day at work a couple of weeks ago. It was approaching 9 p.m. and I was in decent spirits, happy to be headed home. I didn't realize the emotional toll the day had taken on me. I didn't realize how much I needed Warren Haynes at that moment. I had the radio turned to the JSU college station, because I listen to NPR in the mornings, and sometimes they play cool songs in the evening, depending on the DJ. So I'm listening to the radio and this song opens on this funky organ solo. It's slow, it's long, it's patient, it's...familiar. Yes, I have heard this song many times before...what is it?

Then it comes to me. This is Soulshine. It's better than sunshine. It's better than moonshine. It's damn sure better than rain. And it's on the radio. I had no idea how much I needed to hear this song right now. The molasses organ crept up on the end of its run and it was almost time for that bottomless voice to tell me what to do when I can't find the light to guide me through a cloudy day. Then, it just. Stopped. Dead air. A pre-recorded announcer told me what radio station I was listening to, and another song came on, some inane garage band ear-bleeder that it's not safe to listen to while driving. Has that ever happened to you? It's happened to me before, but not like this. I knew I no longer had the number to JSU's radio station programmed into my cellphone, but I checked anyway. DJ, whoever you are, thank whatever god your black pagan heart prays to that my old cellphone died a year ago and that I was too lazy to transfer all the saved numbers over. Because that night, you awakened the slumbering wrath of the Amazon Diva within, and you would've wished for death before the end.

And yes, I have that song on CD. I didn't even try to listen to it when I got home. It wouldn't have been the same.

Now for the happy ending (shut up, Nathan). This past week, out of the blue, Jaimie invites me to a Gov't Mule concert at the Alabama Theatre. She had a last-minute dropout. So we went, and Warren sang that song to me. Just me. It was better than a CD. Better than radio. Damn sure better than rain.

Movie Sign

2005-11-14T07:15:00.000-08:00

If you missed the TV movie event of the millenium, it's gone forever. Well, until next weekend probably.

Kris and Laura and Jimmy and Jaimie came over last night to watch Part II of Category 7: The End of the World over beer and Chinese. We laughed at it and had fun times, so thanks for that, CBS. But I have a question. Has there been a sudden upchuck, er, upsurge of silly not-so-small-budget TV movies in the last couple years or am I just now noticing? And also, not to spoil the movie for you or anything, but the world totally didn't end. Yeah, that spoiled it for you, didn't it? Good. I'll only charge you $50 for each hour of your life I just saved you.

I'm wondering if CBS, Sci-Fi, and other perpetrators of the TV movie phenomenon could just take whatever money they had set aside for that next blockbuster and give it to, um, the poor, or something. I mean, it won't turn a profit, but it'll be tax-deductible. And all you rich execs will feel warm fuzzy sensations.

Also, was anybody else horrified by that last scene with Dennis Quaid and Shannon Doherty?

Schoolhouse Suck

2005-11-07T08:23:00.000-08:00

Did I mention a while back about how I'm taking classes in marketing? How I'm taking five courses, only two of which actually meet? How they're in the same room, being taught by the same guy? Did I mention having doubts about the quality of these classes?

Over the time I've spent in class, I have virtually eliminated these doubts. I no longer question whether or not I am wasting my time. I know I am.

Let me take you through these "classes". The first one is called Human Relations. Now remember, these are business classes. However, our "teacher" decided to take a broader view of human relations and dispose of the notion that people might actually be taking these classes in order to learn something about business. He's spent the whole time (so far) showing tapes and holding classroom discussions about personal relationships, focused mainly on marriage and parenting. Now, I'm sure that he finds this all very fascinating and frankly, so do I. I love delving; it's one of my absolute favorite things to do. Did I say I didn't enjoy the class? No. I said it was a waste of time. And yes, the knowledge of that fact does tend to cut down on the enjoyment factor. I pay my therapist by the hour to talk with me about relationships. I pay the school by the hour to tell me something I don't know.

Second "class": Consumer Behavior. At least that title's a little more clear. A little less wiggle room, y'know? This has to have something to do with consumers consuming things. Ergo, business. We're getting warmer. Thing is, our business "teacher" doesn't really seem terribly interested in business, so he shows us a bunch of video tapes that profile various successful businesses and what they do that's so great. Do I have a problem with this? Only one. I could've bought that tape series for about $200 less than it costs to take this "class".

Third "class": Physical Supply and Distribution Management. I like that title. Good strong title. Very specific. It's also the name of our textbook, which costs $100 retail at the campus bookstore and is the only thing I would've needed to do absolutely everything which is required for successful completion of the coursework. This class does not meet. We basically pick five random chapters out of the textbook, read them, and answer the questions at the end. I'm really not kidding.

The fourth and fifth "classes" are so similar they're really not worth mentioning separately. One is an independent study and the other is an internship. For the independent study, I have to work somewhere and write a 3-page paper about what I learned. For the internship, I have to work somewhere and write a 3-page paper about what I learned.

Do you guys have any idea how much it costs to go to school? I already put in my four years, okay? I'm doing this to GAIN KNOWLEDGE. What a motherfucking concept.

I recount all this because this week, it came to a head. Last time "class" met, our "instructor" handed out schedules for what would be available next semester. Would you believe that we'll have five classes, three of which will actually meet, all in the same room, all with the same instructor, who incidentally is the same "instructor" I have this semester. Needless to say, that will not be happening. Business for Dummies, here I come.

Officer Doof

2005-11-01T13:15:00.000-08:00

Is it illegal to direct a display of road rage toward an agent of the law?

This morning on my way to class, I was in a left turn lane behind a SherrifMobile. We got a turn signal and the guy just sat there. I couldn't tell if he was on the phone or eating breakfast or whatever because his windows were tinted darker than civilian windows are allowed to be tinted. So I started to creep up on him but I was hesitant. What do you do when a law dog is being an idiot driver? I realized I've never confronted that situation before. Usually what I'll do is creep up, just so the person in front of me will register the motion and snap out of it. That's my version of a polite reminder. Then if that doesn't work, I'll flash my lights or honk my horn as a last resort. I hate honking at people in the morning because I know it'll put them in a bad mood. And I don't want that. I just want them to get out of my way.

None of those tactics, however, seemed appropriate in light of the fact that this particular idiot driver could strip search me if he felt so inclined. I decided to go ahead with the creeping but it did no good whatsoever. He sat through the whole damn turn signal. At this point, I was wondering if he was doing something "official", something that simple minds like mine wouldn't understand. But when the next signal rolled around, he turned with the easy confidence of a man who had no clue he'd been blocking traffic for the last ten minutes.

He turned into the grocery store and I glared at him as I passed. Take that!

Daylight savings!

2005-10-30T05:56:00.000-08:00

Thank God I have a computer that's smarter than me, so that when I glance down at the bottom of the screen absently wondering if it's 9:00 yet, it can tell me that no, it is in fact almost 8:00. It can also tell me that in good conscience, I should let Chris sleep another hour and not wake him up early just because I was too absent-minded to realize I could've slept another hour as well. And it can lecture me on why the hell is it exactly I carry around a calendar in my purse if I don't write stuff like this in it. It can draw up an example of what my calendar should look like:

Saturday, Oct. 29:
Angel Food pick-up day
Zombie Parade
Daylight Savings begins tomorrow

Sunday, Oct. 30:
Jaimie & Jimmy coming over for Vampire Bats
Daylight Savings begins

Monday, Oct. 31:
Halloween!
Party @ Catoes
Daylight Savings started yesterday

Sunday, Nov. 6:
Play at Morgan Road Vineyard
Daylight Savings has been ongoing for a week so please reset the clocks in your house instead of doing the math in your head. This is what grown-ups do.

Thanks, Computer! Guys, I know HP gets a lot of flack, but it really has come a long way. Bit of a smartass though.

Fall happens

2005-10-24T09:18:00.000-07:00

Apparently, Mother Nature's Alabama delegate woke up this morning and realized it was October. I'll be reacquainting myself with my heating bill sometime very soon.

Jaimie's birthday was Friday. She's 28. Or 30 - 2, if your glass is half empty. We had yummy lasagna at her parents' house and she got a new black Jeep. I don't think she's told Red about that yet. But between you and me, the sooner the better. I mean, I like Red, but that relationship was going nowhere fast. Well, it was going nowhere at about 45 mph. Even on the interstate. (I love you Jaimie! No hitting.)

It got me thinking about my next birthday and how far away it is. That's fine, I'm not in any hurry. It's just that it seems like I've been 24 for a really long time. I've been 24 for years. What will happen when I turn 25? I don't know how to be anything but 24. Not to mention that the last time I had to deal with an age that was a squared number, I was 16. 16! That was so long ago. Will I remember how to act?

I must apologize for my silliness. That's what happens when I'm sleepy and bored and have nothing in particular to write about.

Laura brought it to my attention the other day that I never posted a link to my Flickr account, wherein are cute pictures of the kitty cats. So without further ado: http://www.flickr.com/photos/woodlayson

It's on my to-do list to give my Flickr account a little more content diversity, but we know how that can be. Oh yeah, if you want to see the kitten pix in chronological order, start at the bottom of page 2 and work backwards. I don't know why they posted like that and I haven't taken the time to figure out how to switch them up.

They want you!

2005-10-18T12:13:00.000-07:00

It's that time again. Pledge week on NPR! Woo-hoo!

www.wbhm.org

That's the Birmingham station. There's also an 800 number that I can't remember. It's one of the worthier causes I can think of and it's $10 a month I think to be a member. Not that you get anything for being a member (except I think maybe a coffee cup). But it's about helping to perpetuate an invaluable social service. And prestige, of course. Maybe they give you a shiny laminated card. I'm gonna ask for one. And if they don't give me one, I'll make my own. I want to be a CARD-CARRYING member.

I'm sure NPR news isn't perfect, but it's the most unbiased, trustworthy source of information out there. That, to me, is worth the price of admission. Had to share.

The Old Man

2005-10-17T09:22:00.000-07:00

Have I mentioned that Chris's back has been suffering from The Pinched Nerve of Everlasting Torture? He's been walking around like an 80-year-old man for days. (See Jaimie? I totally bucked the temptation to use the word "octogenarian".) It was sometime last week that he came home from school with a backache and woke up the next day unable to even lift his arms. He went to my chiropractor, who predictably gave him the same doomsday speech she gave me. Only he must be worse off, because she gave him a bunch of cool stuff. He got some little electrode thingies to stick on his back and a neck pillow device that I don't know how to describe other than the fact that it looks like an S&M toy.

He'd been getting better, but when he woke up yesterday morning, the whole thing had started all over. It's like a leg cramp that starts to subside and then you move it the wrong way and that wave of pain rolls back over you again. Only this is taking longer. When I said school was killing him, I wasn't intending to be literal.

Jimmy and Jaimie came over last night and brought us Chinese food, and that was a cheerer-upper. We watched a silly movie on TBS and read our fortune cookie predictions aloud adding the phrase "in bed" at the end, which made us laugh that 12-year-old laugh that's reserved for jokes about bodily functions and unseemly anatomy. It was good times.

Catching the bug

2005-10-12T06:46:00.000-07:00

This is my 100th post. Visualize confetti.

By "the bug", I am not referring to the Icky Throat-itch Cough of Doom you've been hearing so much about, although I indeed still have it. I do, however, have to comment that it will be interesting to see how I'm going to pull off leading worship not once, but twice this Sunday. That's like walking a tightrope with vertigo.

No, the bug I'm referring to is far more insidious, with consequences that could last for decades and affect everyone around us. Chris and I have both felt its icy hand on our shoulders and I fear it's too late to escape its evil thrall.

We're looking at real estate.

Everyone is buying houses. Jaimie. Brad and Cindy. Zach and Kristie. Nathan and Alex (well, if they could find a decent realtor and a homeowner who isn't in a coma). It might as well be the flu. And now Chris and I find ourselves asking each other questions we have no right even thinking at this point.

"Buy or build?"

"Urban or rural?"

"Where's the best school system?"

I mean, hold the brakes. School system? SCHOOL SYSTEM?!? I know this is a legitimate concern, but it annoys the piss out of me that these nonexistent children of ours that I don't even want yet are already butting in on our decisions. Shut up, eye-glimmer! You don't get an opinion until you're 20.

I wasn't really concerned that this would go anywhere until we started talking about our credit histories and interest rates and the housing bubble. These are all topics that make my head hurt because they are beyond my comprehension, so to voluntarily discuss these things has got to be a sign that we're not going to walk away from this alive. So far, we haven't made any phone calls. I'll hold off for as long as I can.

While I should've been resting

2005-10-10T08:46:00.000-07:00

This weekend, when the smart thing to do would've been to lay in bed doped up on Robitussin and Goldenseal, I instead decided to do a bunch of useful, productive things. I know. Stupid. Chris and I have been in Project Mode for the last couple of weeks, but that was not my plan for this weekend. Just some simple cleaning up, starting with the bedroom.

My first order of business was to get rid of unnecessary clutter, like the luggage bags that were still out from our anniversary trip. Right, to the closet with you. If you've ever seen our bedroom closet, you'd be eyeing these bags trying to mentally sum up whether or not they would fit in there. But I knew they would, because that's where they were before we used them. Apparently, Chris had a system for getting them in and out that I was unaware of, because when I tried to shove them in there on a low shelf, something snapped. In the literal, not the figurative. I didn't know what it was until the rod that all our nice clothing hung on (we keep our hundred-dollar suits in there) fell.

Let me try to describe to you how our closet worked. There was this metal rod spanning the width of the closet. On one side of the closet, a foot or so inside the door, was a wooden plank that had been fixed to the wall with dozens of bent, skewed nails. It ran the depth of the closet. On the other side was a similar plank. The metal rod rested balanced on top of these two planks with nothing much to hold it in place, so it just sort of rolled around in there. With clothes on it, it didn't move around much because from shoulder to shoulder, our hangers took up the entire depth of the closet.

We could've fixed it up in a way similar to how it had been jerry-rigged the first time, but I saw in this tragedy an opportunity. We could buy new shelves and a new rod and have a truly functional closet here. So, when Chris got home, we went to Lowe's.

I don't know why we keep going to Lowe's. There has to be some other place that sells shelves and closet bars. But we weren't really sure what we were looking for exactly and we wanted options. We settled on some 20" deep wire shelves, so we buzzed for somebody to come and cut them for us. And this guy...he was a salesman. By the time we checked out, he'd hooked us up with $200 worth of stuff we would absolutely need to outfit THE TINIEST CLOSET YOU'LL EVER SEE IN YOUR ENTIRE LIFE. How? How did he do that?

By the time we got back from the emotionally draining experience that Lowe's always is, we'd decided to take half of the stuff we just bought back, which was too late to do since it was Sunday and they close early. So even though technically we didn't make two trips, it still doesn't count as a win because of the inevitability that we will. When we got home, we realized the cordless drill wasn't charged, so we didn't even get to start on the closet rod. Last night, we slept on the couch because clothes, luggage, and various other homeless sundries were piled on top of the bed.

I remember a time when cleaning one's room was a simple thing with simple objectives and few real obstacles. However, I think that in the future it would behoove me to remember that it is not that way anymore.

3:36 a.m.

2005-10-09T01:36:00.000-07:00

May I bitch? Because, not that this is of interest to anyone but me at the moment, but I am awake. Wide awake.

My throat hurts.

Well it doesn't hurt so much as it has that scratchy feeling that I can't really ignore because it makes me want to swallow a lot. How this rendered me bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the middle of the damn night I don't know. I just know that I'm waiting patiently for 5 a.m. Nothing will put you to sleep faster than 5 a.m.

I went and bought Pills today (technically yesterday). They went up by $3 from last month. It's gotten to where they go up by a few cents every other damn month, but $3? Now they cost me over $40 a month, and I'm wondering if, in the long run, it wouldn't be cheaper just to have a damn kid. Anyway, I'm wondering what's up with the price hike and when I open the bag, I get my answer.

The box looks different.

For the love, they changed the stupid-ass design and charged me $3 for it. I liked the old box just fine. Can I buy one of those for the old price?

I was on the phone with Jaimie today (technically yesterday) and shared my frustration. She theorized that the right-wing conservative radicals were hiking the price of birth control to prevent people from buying it and thus denying their unborn children the fertilization they deserve. I theorized that the left-wing commie liberals improved the box design to entice more teenagers to enjoy consequence-free premarital sex. Then, we laughed.

I'm going back to bed. Wish me luck.

A Series of Recent Events --or-- Playing Catch-up

2005-10-06T11:52:00.000-07:00

I'd hoped to post again before being berated for my blogstapation, but alas, I was a day late and a dollar short. I usually post in my office when work gets slow, and that just hasn't happened in a while. In fact, I haven't been in my office for a while. In fact, when I got back to my office, I found a squatter asleep under the desk. I woke him up and he yelled at me to get out of his house and stop stealing his shoes. Don't worry, I set him up in a phone booth. It's more spacious anyway.

Here's a recap on the last little while. Feel free to read it in several sittings and pretend these entries were written on different days.

Fast Times at Culinard High

Chris started his last semester of culinary school this week. It's the one where the students actually run the real live white-tablecloth restaurant that real live people go to eat a five-course meal. Anyway, the poor guy has to get up at 5:00 a.m. every morning to be there at 7:30. He's already been yelled at by some classically trained British fag who thinks he's Gordon Ramsay. And it looks like he'll have an average of two days a week out of the four he works in the kitchen that he'll have to come home, change clothes, and run to the job he actually gets paid to do to work until 2 a.m. This will go on for ten weeks of his life that he anticipates will knock about five years right off the top of his life expectancy. Pray for the dude.

Do-It-Yourself

This past weekend, I felt myself falling into a funk that I experience on many weekends, especially Saturdays, wherein I have nothing specific to do and am all alone in the wooden box I call home for hours on end. This time, I pledged to not let myself waste any more time on the destructive cycle of getting so bored that I don't feel like doing anything which makes me more bored, etc. I consider this a massive character flaw on my part (although my therapist assures me it's not) and last weekend I decided to challenge it to a duel. I pulled all the living room furniture into the middle of the room, laid down a dropcloth, made the two separate obligatory trips to Lowe's that occur whenever home improvement work is to be undertaken, and got to work painting trim and caulking corners. This is a little chore that was left half-done at the time we moved in and that, predictably, we neglected to finish once we were settled in. It has bugged me every day of my life since then. Why, I ask you, why live with that? So I painted, and I painted, and I painted. Then, when all the world was white with a glorious new coat of paint, I looked overhead and saw that it was not yet good.

No crown moulding.

Okay, I don't know how many of you out there have attempted to install crown moulding, but it's not an intuitive process. Not even for guys. Not even for guys who are very handy and industrious. It is a learned skill, and that's all there is to it. So watching me try to analytically break down the elements of the proper cut was...well, there should've been popcorn. Mom was there trying to help, and she brought Mario with her. For those of you who don't know Mario, he works with our company and he is the handiest guy ever. He's also the coolest. A lot more projects around the duplex would've been left undone had he not been there to help. So the three of us, three reasonably intelligent people, one of whom is a whiz at all things utilitary, none of whom are strangers to "projects", end up sitting there at the end of the day with splinters and shards of improperly cut pieces of $1 a foot pre-finished moulding. Now let me put this in perspective. We all work in a business in which our talents are often underrated, because it's the kind of service people often think they can perform themselves. This is a notion we fight against, because we believe that our talents should be recognized, that our skills should be seen for the societal necessity that they are. At that moment, we looked at each other and saw a room full of hypocrites.

Ultimately, it took four more days and the collaborative power of six individuals to essentially nail some boards to the wall. I will never again think little of a man who is good with a miter saw.

Cat Blog

Our little girl kitten, Peanut, has experienced a rite of passage. No, not like that. She got herself stuck on our roof for the first time. We don't even let them out much since they're not snipped yet, but sometimes when I'm sitting outside, I'll let them go with me and play in the yard. Last time I let them out, Peanut shimmied up the tree that grows right next to our front porch before I could stop her. Do cats just live in the "now" or do they lack any sense of foresight? This happened right before I was about to put them inside and go to class, where I had a test to take. And the only ladder nearby was locked up in the garage that my landlords, who were already gone to work, had the key to. Luckily, she found her way down before she made me late. She didn't stick the landing, but it was her first time.

Symbology

Chris and I got married in a field outside my grandparents' house. We cut down some young sweetgum trees and made a little gazebo type thing out of them. It was one of my favorite makeshift touches we added to the ceremony site. When the big day was over, we left them there and we never really got around to taking them down, mostly 'cause we liked it. Yesterday, I drove by the field on my way home from work and I noticed that one of the trees had started sprouting new growth. I'm not talking about vines growing on it or anything. I mean, there were little branches around the top of it with bright new leaves. I know there are some plants that you can cut off a stem and plant it and Voila! New plant. But a tree? With no root system? Maybe it's the last gasp of a fallen plant with a still semi-functional vascular system, but it was pretty and it made me smile.

Back in my own head

2005-09-20T11:24:00.000-07:00

As of this past Saturday, Chris and I have been married for an entire year. Paper, baby! Yeah!

We went to Chattanooga and stayed in a suite and ordered room service and went to a white-table-cloth restaurant (which Chris assures me is a title of distinction). All this splurging might've been kept under tighter control if it hadn't been so damn hard to get there.

I went into work Friday morning hoping to make a few phone calls and be back home in an hour to pack and get out of Dodge. I'll spare you the hair-pulling details, but suffice it to say that at noon when I was finally pulling out of the lot, I had a feeling we would not be leaving on schedule.

I'd asked Chris to pick up the house a little and make babysitting arrangements for the kitties while I was gone to work. When I got home, this had not been done. It was no fault of his; he'd gone outside that morning to find that one of his tires was low and knew he had to do something about it before we left or it would be flat when we got back.

So we're trying to rush to get things cleaned up and Chris is like, "Look, Nibbler's the only cat we have who's even allowed to go out yet. We know how much they eat in a day. Let's just set 'em up and let 'em go."

And I said, "Doesn't that make us negligent parents?" And he said, "Not if we don't tell anyone."

Oops. Hee.

I went for it because that would mean we wouldn't have to clean the house up if we weren't expecting anybody to be there, and I tried to brush away the thought that most of the time people are at our house while we're on vacation, they're not expected. But I mean, come on, am I really going to clean my house so that when my friends come by to tie all the knick-knacks together with yarn, they won't think less of me?

So we left the kitties with plenty of food and water and cardboard boxes to discover, and we trucked it. Everything went smoothly until we were about 20 or 25 miles outside of Chattanooga. I started noticing a shimmy to the car that I've noticed before and idly mentioned to Chris that that's probably not a good sign. But it's an old car and I've had lots of old cars and they all shake. So mostly I ignore stuff like that, which is not a good habit, but what're you gonna do? They all shake.

Then the scary noises started, and about the time I got through saying, "That does not sound good," the car suddenly and violently dropped lower on one side and I cringed at the tell-tale thwapthwapthwapthwapthwap. Did I check before we left to see if the car had a spare? No. But Chris didn't either and isn't it the guy's job to think of shit like that? Anyway, we had one. One of those cute little toy ones, underinflated. Eh, it got us to the nearest gas station.

Long story short (don't say it), we got there and had a great time and we got to relax in a hot tub the size of our bedroom. I suppose it was worth the trouble, if you don't count the two hours we had to wait at the WalMart tire center on the way back. Have you ever tried to kill two hours at WalMart without buying something? We managed to spend less than $10.

Vengeance is a dish best served cold

2005-09-12T06:19:00.000-07:00

Mom and Dad went to Chattanooga this weekend for their anniversary. Hey guys, which one by the way? Was it the big 2-5? Because I thought you were supposed to have a big blowout with other people for that one. Or maybe that's just if you're not having sex anymore. Hee. Don't hurt me.

Anyway, I find it mildly amusing that I seem to talk to my parents more when they're on vacation than I do when they're in town. Every half-hour or so I'll get a call from one of them which I can only assume serves to rub in my face how great a time they're having. How they manage to always catch me in the middle of doing laudry or watching a really bad SciFi movie because it's the only thing on or some other mundane thing that makes me wish I too was on vacation is a gift I shall never comprehend.

So intermittently over the weekend I'm getting calls saying various things like:

"This is a great hotel! If you can afford it, you should totally stay here sometime."

"Man, there's this great rib place you should really check out."

"We caught this live show on the riverfront. Boy did we pick a good weekend!"

I'm used to this. I just dream that one day, they'll be old and decrepid and Chris and I will be jetsetting and calling them in the middle of the latest episode of The Price is Right (which will still be featuring Bob Barker although perhaps without eyeballs or skin) and letting them know how great Venice is in the spring. Wish you were here! Kisskiss.

But this time? This time, they went too far. Perhaps had I been there to handle it myself, I could've maintained a semblance of control over the situation, but alas, I was working (working on a Saturday...brilliant...HOW DO THEY KNOW?) and Chris answered the phone. He called me at work and said simply, "I hate your parents."

"You hate my parents?"

"I hate your parents."

"What did they do?"

"They invited us to Chattanooga, to a brewer's festival."

"What?!"

"They said they'd pay for the hotel."

"WHAT?!?"

"...If we drop everything and come right now."

"But...you have to work today."

"I know."

"And I have to work today."

"I know."

"And you have to work tomorrow."

"I know."

"I hate my parents."

You guys just give us a few decades. Someday, one of you is going to break a hip and it will be on that day that we invite you to go hiking with us in Colorado.

In their defense, they brought us home some delicious dark brew, the kind that's so fresh and untainted by preservative that it has to be consumed within three days or it just won't be the same. Which was probably a selfish gesture, seeing as it was the only factor which saved them from the involvement of a lead pipe.

Damn

2005-09-09T07:31:00.000-07:00

I want a dog. Jaimie gets a dog. Why can't I have a dog?

Well, you might say, because Liz darling, you don't have a yard.

Well then, I would respond, I want a yard too. And a fence.

But Liz, you would say, first you need a house.

Okay, fine, I reply, I want a house.

I want a house so that I can have a dog. Is that a bad reason to take out a loan?

Times of Crisis

2005-09-05T06:54:00.000-07:00

I didn't realize it had been so long. It's been a hard, sad week for a lot of people. My husband is dealing directly with a lot of them who have filtered in this far north. He says it's heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time. They're so appreciative of every little thing we do to help.

I haven't been watching the news a lot in the last few days, mostly because I never do. NPR is my source of choice, but I've even been laying off of that. I don't know why. Maybe because it seems to be getting to that point where all our feathers have started to go down and the truth of what's happened has done all the sinking in it's going to do and now...now it's time to get angry. It's time to point fingers and lay blame. Some people are mad at the federal government for not acting quickly or forcefully enough. Some people are mad at those who stayed in the city. Some people are mad at their neighbors who aren't doing enough to help. There's reason enough to be mad at all of them. I myself am liking being angry at the thugs who took advantage of the darkness of the ruined streets of New Orleans by robbing, raping, and murdering fellow human beings who were just looking for a way out and thwarting the efforts of rescue workers who were trying to help. But even with the righteous and rather uncontroversial flavor of anger I've chosen, I still find myself exhausted, frustrated, and discouraged by the adolescent bickering we always seem to go back to in the face of tragedy and devestation.

A hurricane happened. Did everyone do all they could? Did anyone? No. We don't live in a perfect world. We live in a world where people in crisis succomb to their basest instincts, where governments are cumbersome and slow-witted, where friends and neighbors shut their eyes and ignore the pain and suffering of others. We live in a world where hurricanes happen.

Some things are gonna change around here

2005-08-27T07:29:00.000-07:00

You will now refer to me as Princess Liz, and you will do so in such a way as to convince onlookers that you have always called me thus. Those who know me personally (excluding family) will organize yourselves into three categories: Friend, Enemy, or Both. There is no category for those of you who sort of like me or have no opinion of me. You will have to choose a side, although you may feel free to switch from Friend to Enemy four times before automatically falling into the Both column. I now have diva priveleges such as bitch-on-demand, bling, and discounts at over 30 retail clothing stores.

Yesterday, to kick off my new diva status, Mom and I went shopping. Guess where we went.

SAKS.

A lady followed us around and suggested clothing. They're fitting room was bigger (and better furnished) than our bedroom. Nothing was on sale. Well, the bathing suits were on sale for the amazing low price of whatever you would pay for them first-run at any other department store. But y'know what? The feel of the place was so much warmer and nicer than the Parisian we'd just been to. Parisian's stuff was still shamelessly overpriced, but also, the whole place made us feel little and uncomfortable. Saks, which I'd never been inside before for fear of that very same thing, was even more expensive, but we bought stuff there because it didn't have an atmosphere that made us feel like bugs. Was there buyer's remorse? Of course. But while I will probably avoid Parisian like the plague from now on, I might just go back to Saks. When I make $50,000 more a year.

Phlegmatic

2005-08-25T09:10:00.000-07:00

We took an indicator test in class today to determine our temperaments along the venerable guidelines of which of our bodily fluids most controls our thoughts and behaviors. Apparently, the compelling voice of that stuff that gets stuck in the back of my throat is the one I listen to most.

This is a pretty different result from the one I got many moons ago when we took a very similar test in high school. I tested melancholy by a nose, one point higher than choleric. Sanguine was dead last. Today, it was the choleric type that got left in the dust with a close cluster of the other three.

I can see clearly that I'm more outgoing than I was back in the day, but apparently I am also more moody, more worrisome, more negative, and less decisive. How can you be easygoing and a worrier at the same time, by the way?

I also defied the norm by marrying someone of similar temperament. Most, I hear, marry their opposite.

No, I can't fit you in at 6.

2005-08-24T10:15:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was one of those days that seemed like more than one. I started class yesterday and today, when I think about it, I want to say that happened sometime last week. Because that's the first thing I did yesterday and three days' worth of stuff has gone on since then. So here's my yesterday:

Day 1

I went to my first classes. They're on a different campus which is actually closer to my house (yay!) but also in a scary part of town (boo!). I found the building pretty easily but I thought I was in the wrong place because there were a lot of people around and not one of them was white. I thought, "Well, I guess it could be that all my classmates just happen to be black. More improbable things have occured in the universe." Then a bell rang across the parking lot and they all went into another building. Oh. Right. High school. Just when I was getting all psyched up for cultural illumination. Maybe next time.

So I found the right room and settled in for what I was sure to be a literal pain in the ass. You see, all my classes are in the same room, being taught by the same teacher, so I get to stare at the same walls and listen to the same voice for six hours. My ass would indeed hurt. But as it happened, teacher dude covered the syllabi of all five classes in about 40 minutes. Score. Turns out that three out of these five classes aren't even going to meet on any regular basis. On the one hand, this works very well with my work schedule. On the other hand, what is it exactly about these classess that's worth $1,350?

Day 2

This day started when I got to work. I got a few things done before I accumulated several errands and ended up spending most of the rest of the workday on the road. I planned to visit my grandmother, drop off a bill, go to the bank, and pick something up from WalMart for work. My plan was going smoothly until I got to the bank. Jaimie was two rows down from me at the drive-thru and she didn't see me. How could I pass that up? I had to call her.

Jaimie: Hello?

Me: Hey, it's me. What's up?

J: Hey! I haven't talked to you in forever!

M: I know. I was wondering if you were headed to the grocery store, maybe you could pick some stuff up for me.

J: Oh yeah right. Ice cream and milk, right? How did you know? (At this point, Ms. P is under the impression I'm teasing her about something Crazy Margaret did that I don't even know about.)

M: Well, I figured you had the cash since you've just been to the bank and all.

J: What?! Where are you, you spying whore?

M: Waving from the second row.

J: Yeah, well I'm giving you the finger. You see that?

She didn't really call me a spying whore, but she did really give me the finger. Then we made up and went to the bookstore together where she asked my permission to read a Steinbeck novel and I wouldn't let her. A promise is a promise.

Day 3

This was the day that, after we were done at the bookstore, I hung out at Jaimie's house a while, then I picked up car-less Laura from work and hung out at her house a while, then Jaimie and Jimmy came over with Chinese food and we all hung out together for a while. We tried to play guitars, with some success, but the Cute Kittie Puffball of Distraction marred our efforts. Laura's new kitty is a music lover, as evidenced by the fact that he alternately kept trying to strum, sit on, and crawl into my guitar as I played it. He also fell asleep on my shoulder, which made it difficult to play, but I'd like to see you try to move him. His stare of cuteness is paralyzing.

Day 4

Day 4 started around 9:30 or 10:00 when I finally got around to going to WalMart. At 10:30ish, when I arrived home for the day, I helped Chris design a menu and put together a presentation folder for one of his school projects. Peaceful oblivion came sometime around 1 a.m. I guess there really should be another hour in every day.

Jubilation

2005-08-22T12:59:00.000-07:00

Before I get to the meat, I have to tell you what just happened. I already wrote this post once before and I lost it. That's not funny, but how I lost it is a little funny. See, I got this new mouse that's wireless and has the cool red light under it and it's ball-less. Completely emasculated. I call it my fe-mouse. Anyway. It has this neat feature where on the side where your thumb goes, there's two more buttons. You can program them to do pretty much anything (like function keys, right?) but as a default, they serve as Forward and Back browser buttons. So earlier, I was typing out my little blog entry of glee and I pressed the "Publish" button. And while it was thinking about whether or not it would do what I told it to, I was remembering that I'd forgotten to copy my entry to clipboard so that, in case Blogger decided in its infinite wisdom to trash my post rather than publish it, I'd have a backup. So I was highlighting my whole post and getting ready to click Ctrl+C when I bumped my mouse hand on the side of the keyboard and accidentally pressed the back button.

DOH!

Isn't it just like us self-destructive humans to cause ourselves precisely the kind of pain we are trying to avoid?

Following is Attempt #2 to convey the good news I so wanted you all to know hours ago:

My husband is now what we in the Mafia like to call a "made man". Is he untouchable on the hard streets of downtown Gadsdonia? Well, no. But he now has a thing that we in the Mafia like to call "job security". He now has access to Mafia priveleges like "health insurance" and a "cafeteria plan".

That's right, ladies and gents, the boy is full-time. There should be a parade. Really. Set that up. DON'T STAND THERE AND LOOK AT ME LIKE A DUMBASS. GET IT DONE! I'll cut you.

He was up for this very job about a month ago, but he got passed over initially for reasons we could only guess. They were pretty good guesses, but guesses nonetheless. Now, as the result of an unpredictable chain of events (and what must've been some damn fine prayin'), that door was reopened and credit given where it was due. Chris was officially congratulated this morning and, after filling out some paperwork, he'll step into his new position on Friday. The only downside is the four-month overlap after his 40-hour weeks kick in and before he graduates from culinary school. That should be interesting, in a mortalizing, ass-kicking kind of way. So thank you all who knew about this situation and prayed for us, or who didn't know and prayed for us. I'll return the favor.

Sidebar

2005-08-19T06:58:00.000-07:00

What is it exactly about the content of my blog that entices spam of the cartoon animal variety? Or at all?

NOTICE TO SPAMMERS: YOU ARE REACHING A GRAND TOTAL OF ABOUT FIVE PEOPLE HERE. I DON'T REALLY MIND THE INTRUSION (YET), BUT YOUR TIME AND ENERGY COULD BE BETTER SPENT ELSEWHERE. END OF LINE.

Know Thyself. Check. Then what?

2005-08-19T06:17:00.000-07:00

The Cakeholes are having their first meeting thingy tonight (it is tonight, isn't it?). I think I'll go. I'm feeling all sorry for myself today because I've got 48 things to do at work and I haven't seen my friends all week. It's no way to live.

School starts back on Tuesday. At varying intervals, I am either excited about starting back (oh how I love the schooling), freaked out about it (more exhaustion, less free time, if that's possible), or both. I'm sittin' on "both" at the moment.

You'll be happy to know that the chiropractor said I could go back to the gym. You'll be sad to know that I haven't actually been back yet (except for yoga class...you'd think that as semi-diligent I am about going, I'd be able to stand on one foot for any meaningful length of time by now). I told her she was screwing with my life. I told her that if I got out of the habit, it would be like falling halfway down Kilaminjaro and having to decide whether to start back up or just slide the rest of the way down. I never choose the path of least resistance. But if I stand there thinking long enough, it will generally choose me. Did she listen? No.

I know these things about myself. I consider it a personality flaw, one that comes with a package that also contains some very good traits I wouldn't exchange for the world. But at this stage in life, when I long to be proactive and have many things to be proactive about, I can't seem to force this out of myself. Are some people engineered or predisposed to be along for the ride? I'd refuse to accept that if I were more assertive. Hee. Get it? Oh, nevermind.

Boy are my arms tired

2005-08-13T18:00:00.000-07:00

I just got back from a trade show in Atlanta. It was fun. I am ex-to-the-nth-hausted. Highlights of the trip included:

1. Riding the MARTA. If you really want to know a city, you must first become acquainted with its public transportation. I'd give this a rating of 3.5 on a scale of 5 for a nominal degree of friendliness and cooperation, a pretty smooth ride, and an eye-catching color scheme. Points were deducted for unpersonable gate attendants and for the unintuitive nature of the token machines (And what's up with charging $1.75 for a token? I'd rather it be $2.00 so I could do the math in my head while five people waited in line behind me.). Points were added for the wisecracking late-night subway operator who encouraged community and group participation.

2. The Braves game. I call this a highlight mainly because it was so memorable. I've never physically witnessed a team losing that badly. I'm sure a professional baseball team has lost a game 8-0 many times before, but I wasn't there to be embarrassed by it. Now, I don't know much about baseball. If I were Jaimie, I could give you a play by play and tell you who was hot and who was not and what the Braves did wrong. What I can tell you is that a guy named Johnson made some impressive catches in what I'm pretty sure was the outfield, and a guy named Franco (who everyone was very excited to see at bat) was the only Braves player who managed to run two bases in one play the whole game. Also, I had to walk half the circumfrence of the stadium to find the nearest funnel cake and I'd missed seeing Arizona make three more runs by the time I got back.

3. The Irish pub at Underground Atlanta. I specify because Underground Atlanta itself wasn't all that great. It was cool and all, but it was very mall-like; it wasn't the hip, scary, subcultural breeding ground it used to be. It's sad to see cheap, cardboard commercialism seeping right under the skin of the city. Anyway, the pub was still great. They played U2 the whole time, and it made Mom and I giggle that there was not a single employee of the pub who even remotely looked Irish...or even caucasian. I had Guinness on tap for the first time, and it didn't taste different at all. So kudos to the widget people. It works.

That's the nutshell version. I need sleep. And probably a shower.

Take two and call me in the morning

2005-08-05T09:24:00.000-07:00

My chiropractic experience to date, aside from the awkward timing of appointments, has not been unpleasant. I have only one complaint, and I'm not sure who to direct it toward.

If my chiropractor is to be believed, here are a few things we should be doing in order to take care of our spines:
1. When getting into vehicles, we should sit on the edge of the seat, swing both legs together, and pivot on an axis. We should not ever get in one leg at a time or sit down heavily.
2. We should not hold a telephone for too long in one hand. We should switch hands often, and if we spend a lot of time on the phone, we should buy a light headset.
3. We should walk with our heads level or slightly raised, never lowered or looking toward the floor.
4. When getting out of bed, we should keep the torso straight and gently bring the feet over the side of the bed, legs and ankles together.
5. We should throw out our La-Z-Boy chairs and replace them with rockers.
6. When working at a desk, we should elevate materials we are reading or working on.
7. We should avoid reaching or anything that involves working overhead. We should be especially careful when combing or shampooing our hair.
8. When bathing, we should sit straight rather than reclining against the back. By leaning back in the tub, we could cause a vertebra to slip out of place.

That's just excerpts from the hand-out she gave me. She also instructed me to stop going to the gym for the time being (even for my precious evil yoga) and to get rid of my brand new Fossil over-she-shoulder messenger bag. I'd like to emphasize brand new if only because she didn't seem concerned about this fact. Does she know how long it takes me to work up the mental fortitude to spend $10 on something as frivolous as a bag? Does she have any idea how long it will take to prepare for that again? Or does she just not care?

If this instruction is in any way inaccurate or excessive, my complaint is to my chiropractor: I wish you would stop scaring people. I understand that the spine is important, but so is the muscle tissue that will go into entropy if I follow your instructions to the letter.

If her instructions are indeed necessary, my complaint must go to God: I know You have an explanation for the fact that You apparently made our skeletons out of bone china. I just wish You would share it with the rest of the class. In my limited understanding, I would've gone with something like stoneware. It's cheaper, more durable, good for any occasion, and microwave safe. In case You wanted my opinion, which I'm sure You'd ask for if You did.

Snip snip

2005-08-03T06:16:00.000-07:00

Nibbler came home from the vet yesterday with fewer internal organs. We've been trying to keep her indoors for the past few weeks until we could get her to the vet, but she's crafty. I half-expected to get a call from the vet saying "We're sorry, we can't do the surgery. Your ho-cat is pregnant again."

Then I started wondering, if Nibbler was pregnant, would they tell me? Or would they just...fix it? In their minds I guess it would be safe to assume that if we're having our cat spayed, we don't want any kittens. But surely they would ask. Right?

I think all this guilt over a situation that probably didn't even occur is partly due to the fact that I was guilty about forcing her to be spayed in the first place. Even though I know she can't really decide for herself. Even though if she could decide, she'd probably tell me to let her have all the cat-sex she wants without fear of gestation. Even though millions of cats are starving and homeless due to overpopulation. I know it defies logic and reason and even compassion. I still feel bad that I took something from her without asking. Lame, huh?

Later on I'm going to educate you guys on what you should and shouldn't be doing for the health of your spine. You might be surprised. Tune in to Nightly News at 10!

Zombie Doctor

2005-07-29T09:23:00.000-07:00

Hear ye all, and cringe.

I'm seeing a chiropractor. I know. Shut up. I hurt.

I went to one way back when (I think I was still in high school) and she took all these X-rays and showed me my spine and how if I didn't get chiropractic care RIGHT NOW AND FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE my back was going to snap like a twig and leave me quadriplegic. She didn't say that, but she did say a lot of scary things and shine a bright light in my face and make me sign a confession...er, a contract. She was always smiling bigger than her mouth looked like it was supposed to stretch and saying that pills are evil. She was really nice, but in that unnerving way that makes you suspect she's a cult member. Or a coke head.

There was no way I was going back to that particular chiropractor, but Mom (who still goes diligently) hooked me up with a different one. This one seems more normal, for a chiropractor, and her plan involves three months of treatment as opposed to FOREVER. But I've been to her office three days in a row, and I'm supposed to go back Monday. Who has time for this shit?

Ooh ooh, and guess what? She called me last night at home, a little after 9 pm...get this...to make sure I was putting ice on my back.

I'm going to be a good girl for this next three months and do everything I'm supposed to. I'll be chronicling my experiences here, along with my findings. Pray I'm not discovered, but if the police tell you I died accidentally from a snapped neck, DON'T BELIEVE THEM.

No I Don't

2005-07-28T18:53:00.000-07:00

Um. Yes I do.

Bad Day

2005-07-28T10:25:00.000-07:00

Every day that I have to deal with a customer complaint in person is a bad day. The LizBot is not properly wired for confrontation.

You would think people would be meaner on the phone than they are in person, what with the whole you-can't-hit-me-because-I'm-20-miles-away factor. I've found the opposite to be true. They act all nice and understanding to lure you to their property, where they can spew curses at you and threaten to cancel their service, which you secretly REALLY want them to do.

Sometimes, of course, they're justified in being unhappy. But apparently today was National Irrational Behavior Day, or maybe Bitch At The Hired Help Day, or Confuse The Nice Innocent Service Provider With Baseless Complaints When She Can See Perfectly Well That Nothing Is Wrong Day. Whatever. Footwear gets a holiday. I wouldn't be surprised. I just wish it were like April Fools or Candid Camera, where they tell you at the end that it's all a big fat joke and we can be happy again.

I hate people. No I don't. Yes I do.

Diversionary Tactics

2005-07-27T08:21:00.000-07:00

Reading: A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis
I know the title sounds like oodles of fun, but don't be deceived. This is not the kind of book that you just pick up and read because you're bored...like I did. I found this one during a routine raid of my dad's bookcase. I thought it was just one of Lewis's essays, but it turned out to be his published journals from the days and weeks immediately following his wife's death. It's a characteristically insightful read, but I recommend mental preparation.

Listening to: Garden State soundtrack
I think I'll submit a suggestion to Merriam-Webster that they redefine mellow as "an adjective describing the experience of listening to Coldplay, Colin Hay, Nick Drake, and Simon & Garfunkel in rapid succession". I go from the Black Eyed Peas straight to this. My musical tastes strike me as not so much well-rounded as schizophrenic.

Watching: Firefly
It's coming on Sci-Fi now and I'm trying to resist the temptation to rent the whole season. I'm doing my penance for not being a faithful enough Whedon fan by resolving to watch them one at a time, on television, with commercials, one week apart. That way I get to share in some of the experience of those who were there for it the first time around. I'll probably break down and rent it in September when the movie comes out, but just because I'll have to have seen all the episodes before I watch the movie.

workplay

2005-07-20T06:04:00.000-07:00

I spent the better part of the day yesterday refilling ink cartridges that I probably just ended up breaking somehow so that they won't work and I'll have to buy new ones anyway. I felt like I was performing surgery, only I still just had that one degree in Communications. I think my patient died on the table, only I'm not sure because I didn't know how to check the pulse.

The thing is, that was ridiculously hard. The HP cartridges are not so bad, other than the fact that there were three colors and I only had one syringe so I had to keep washing it out and that's a P-A-I-N. But the Canon cartridge. Damn you, Canon. Damn you to hell. At first glance, it looked like it would be easier. That's before I knew I had to make my own hole in the ink well with a thumb screw. And then I had to plug it back up and BY GOD IT BETTER BE AIR TIGHT OR YOU'LL DIE IN YOUR SLEEP! That's what the directions said. Almost.

Anyway, long story short (and the story could never live up to you being there to see me ridiculously fumbling with dozens of ink-soaked paper towels), I now know why most people just bend over and buy the damn cartridges. Yeah, I thought I was being the savvy consumer. The lesson I learned yesterday is this: you're gonna take it in the ass from someone; at least take it from a gentleman.

That was not fun, but what was fun was Kris's birthday party this past weekend. I had a monster headache the whole time which the sangria didn't help one bit, but I still had a good time and that is the mark of a great party.

The highlight of the evening was the impromptu hiphop performance. We had three children in attendance, one girl and two boys, who danced the night away to the Black Eyed Peas. Now, I've already commented on the hilarity of the hump song. But you'd have to multiply that by I don't know what to achieve the hilarity of watching that song being roleplayed by three adorable little white kids. They weren't intentionally roleplaying, or else I think I would've been more disturbed, but it was just so perfect. At one point when the lyrics went "you can look but you can't touch", I swear that little Ivy put her hand all up in Jesse's face as if to tell him he could just talk to it.

While we're all on the subject

2005-07-13T12:49:00.000-07:00

Following are the top ten movies I'm ashamed to love, in no particular order:

Clueless (probably just the Rudd factor)

Tremors

Clash of the Titans (actually, I make no apologies for this one)

Speed

The Abyss (at least I'm told I should be ashamed)

Stargate (I think I'm really only ashamed of how much I love this movie)

The Fifth Element (Yes, I saw the parts with Gary Oldman in them. No, I don't care.)

Dirty Dancing

Dune (the Kyle McLachlan version, not the interminable miniseries)

Any Jane Austen adaptation (even Emma)

While I'm at it, my apologies for not liking the following:

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (many have tried and failed to correct this greivous error in judgment)

2001: A Space Odyssey (suck it, Kubrick)

Dances With Wolves (ironically, I liked Waterworld)

Time Bandits (I tried. I really did.)

The Breakfast Club (Dear Chris, please don't divorce me. Love, Liz)

You don't want no drama

2005-07-12T14:05:00.000-07:00

Oh. My. God. The laughing.

Laura copied me the new Black Eyed Peas CD, so I popped it in on my way home. I'm all rockin' out to these songs, and it gets to this one called "My Humps".

"Whatcha gonna do with all that junk, all that junk inside your trunk?"

Snkkt.

"I'm gonna get you drunk, get you love drunk off my hump."

Bah! Bahahaha!

But then THEN she keeps saying the word hump OVER AND OVER AND OVER and I'm all, "Please stop saying 'hump'" and then she finally stops. And then she says "my lovely lady lumps" and that's it. I'm in tears and I can't breathe and that's just it.

Laura, was that the song you were talking about? Because so help me God if I start absent-mindedly singing about my hump in the line at the bank I'm blaming you.

Get Involved

2005-07-12T09:42:00.000-07:00

If you're a blogger, you should go do your part to demystify the art. And hurry, I think they're almost done compiling.

Take a pill, Jaimes

2005-07-12T09:01:00.000-07:00

Hey, all you Northeast Alabamians, how 'bout that big scary hurricane yesterday. Whoo! Cancel school! Close the roads! Call in the Red Cross! We're all gonna DIHEEEEEE!

Performance anxiety, maybe?

This has been a landmark week. The landmark is a sun-baked pile of shit, but I guess you don't really get to choose.

My rantings today (and they would be rantings) would tend to focus on a turn of events that I'm not sure how much liberty I have to discuss. Since this particular development is the only damn thing I can think about at the moment (and ooooh if you knew you would be SO MAD), I continue to be at a loss for words. Just pray I don't go renegade and assassinate a public figure. While you're at it, pray that somebody else does. Hee.

The Power of Song

2005-07-06T11:07:00.000-07:00

I was getting waxy-eyed at work, so sometimes when that happens I pull out a CD to help me snap out of it. Today, I looked through everything I had and didn't want to listen to any of it. Then I found this Lori Chaffer CD that I haven't listened to in at least a year.

For those of you who don't know, Lori Chaffer and her husband Don front the band Waterdeep, which is my favorite band in such the way that I didn't know what a "favorite band" was before I heard them. For this reason, I consider it mildly dangerous to listen to their music (including solo albums). Almost every song they've ever produced has integrated itself into my DNA and has the ability to recall specific moments, emotions, thoughts, or events. Most of these life snippets, oddly enough, are painful. That's part of what made them my favorite band. They console the inconsolable. And that's part of what makes me afraid to put them in the disc changer. I never know what I'll remember.

Today, I remembered my contemplative commutes to school to the tune of "Make No Protest", and "You Can Sing" almost brought me to tears like it used to at a time when I was worried about some people I loved. All in all, it could've been worse. God forbid, it could've been Sink or Swim.

The old man can NOT be sleeping through this.

2005-07-05T16:32:00.000-07:00

Chris had to work yesterday during our Wet'n'Wild Independence Day extravaganza over at Jaimie's parents' house. So we decided to celebrate the 5th of July today. Naturally, today is the day Tropical Storm YourNameHere decided to catch up with us. West is walking in now with a bag of fireworks. Lose some, lose some.

Damn you, weather! If you don't think I'm going to enjoy our pattie melts ALL THE MORE, you've got another thing coming.

No hair-pulling on the playground!

2005-07-05T08:59:00.000-07:00

I'm so glad I got a good long weekend before having to face this morning. I hate hate HATE it when people get pissed off for being asked a question that legitimately pertains to THEIR JOB. I do my job, and I answer questions about it all damn day, and I do it with a smile on my face because that's just part of it. Somebody's getting a Valium and Ecstacy cocktail for lunch. My treat.

Really, though, this is nothing compared to the frustration I experienced last week in the process of trying to get a car title transferred. It went a little something like this.

Day 1 - Went to courthouse toting title. Waited in line. Lady examined my title and showed me that the date of sale on the back had been "written over in error". This is a term I would later become very familiar with. Lady filled out an affadavit for me to get signed and notarized.

Day 2 - Went to seller's home to get his signature. He wasn't home. Left affadavit for him to sign.

Day 3 - Went to seller's home to pick up signed affadavit attesting to date of sale. Resident notary was already gone for the day.

Day 4 - Asked notary to please work her mojo on the magic paper. Affadavit was returned with the date of notarization "written over in error". Yeah, that's right. Called courthouse to confirm my suspicion that no, that would not fly.

Day 5 - Returned to courthouse for a new magic paper. Waited in line. Took paper back to seller's home, where he of course, was not. Waited around for him to get back from playing golf and got him to sign again. Got it notarized again, noting to please be careful about the date.

Day 6 - Returned to courthouse. Waited in line. Magic paper was examined and I was told that the notary notarized the wrong signature. Ha. Hahaha. Lady gave me a new paper, laughed, and commented that the third time's a charm. Indeed. Got seller to meet me and the notary so this could all get taken care of at once. Returned to courthouse later the same day. Waited in line. Lady examined magic paper, heaved a sigh of relief, and asked for $18.

Just after that, I got to wait in an even longer line to get my tag. It looked like a roller coaster line, except without the TVs that play cartoons and Six Flags commercials on a loop. That was just one of those things that wasn't really anyone's fault...well, actually it was about three people's fault, including mine. But it just makes you sit back and wonder when life got so amazingly more complicated than it was ever supposed to be.

Monkey Day

2005-06-28T09:32:00.000-07:00

I have a new toy. It is a mouse that has no wire, and it has a pretty red light on the bottom that you're not suppposed to look directly at, but you do anyway because it's so pretty. I am having fun with my new toy.

But that's neither here nor there. I have an occupational time management technique I'd like to try out. Maybe some of you will find it helpful as well. I call it Monkey Day.

Okay, you know that client you have to call sometime in the next few days and he's a jerk and you're dreading it? He's a monkey. And you need to vacuum the floor of your office but you'll have to change the filter on the vacuum and you've got more important things to do but you can't stop thinking about your floor and how it needs to be vacuumed? Monkey. Those scenarios are office-oriented, because I work in an office, but most everybody has monkeys. They're not urgent, but they do have to be done eventually, and you feel a little queasy every time you think about it. Maybe for a painter it would be ceilings. I don't know. Jaimie, is it ceilings?

Anyway, today I got tired of feeling sick about the things I didn't want to do. So I did them. All of them, all at once. And now I feel so much better. So I think that once a week, I'll have a Monkey Day. I'm thinking of making mine Friday, because Fridays are a little more relaxed and I'm usually in a better mood, and because that'll give me a fresh start the next week so maybe Monday won't suck so much ass. No Monkey Mondays! Yay!

I hypothesize that two good things will come of this:
1. My backlogged projects won't pile up so high, so that even on the days that I have to deal with unpleasant tasks, there won't be so many of them.
2. I'll spend far less time worrying about things that aren't getting done, because I know exactly when they will get done. As a result, I'm not constantly beating myself up about getting them done now.

I hope this experiment works out to my benefit, but I'd also be curious as to whether it has broader applications. So if you're having monkey trouble, try it out and let me know how it goes. If it works well, I'll write a book and give you all a cut of the profits.

Goof

2005-06-27T13:06:00.000-07:00

I just got completely derailed in the middle of leaving a phone message. I was midway through my message when somebody picked up the phone on the other end. I expected to hear a "hello" and then to have to repeat what I'd just said, so I quit talking and waited. No hello. They just hung up. Then I wasn't sure if the tape was still rolling, because they picked up and then hung up again and does that stop the tape? I don't know. I'd feel like a doofus just talking to air, but I'd feel like more of a doofus just dropping out in the middle of a phone message for no apparent reason. And that's when I realized that that's exactly what I was doing by sitting there like an idiot and not talking. By that time, I'd forgotten the last thing I'd said and took another few seconds to recover and stutter myself up to date. I quickly finished relaying my information, hung up, and spent the next few minutes wondering how much dead air I'd left on their machine. It felt like an eternity.

Does anyone else panic when their impromptu ramblings are being recorded for posterity? Does anyone else occasionally feel like most of their job consists of concealing the fact that they're a great big goof?

Goof. That's a funny word. And I'm a funny me. I'm such a goof. Goof. Goofgoofgoofgoofgoofgoof!

As promised

2005-06-23T19:42:00.000-07:00

I remember this one great big huge margarita the size of my head that I drank one time and it was strong and salty and it punched me in the gut. That's the first and last margarita that ever affected my state of mind. Tonight was no exception.

I had four or five of those things. They were good, but they were too sugary. The sugar made me feel hyper and the alcohol made me sleepy. Does it not buck conventional wisdom to mix uppers and downers?

In the end, it wasn't the margaritas but the female kinship that made the evening. We acted like such girls, and I can't speak for anyone else at the table, but that's a rare pleasure for me. I hung out with people I so rarely get to spend quality time with, one of which lives about ten feet away. We talked about guys and sex and marriage and divorce and had a grand time, even without the benefit of margaritas you can actually taste the tequila in.

Marrrrrrrrrrrgaritas

2005-06-23T14:30:00.000-07:00

I'm about to go have some. In about 30 minutes. I'm not driving.

This has been the week that wouldn't die. Jaimie and I were talking last night about how monstrous work has become for us lately and how I marvel at her ability to maintain her website, teach an art class, and take on creative projects in her spare time. I think my problem is my utter inability to multitask. One week, I'll eat, think, and breathe nothing but work. The next, I'll resolve not to work so hard and end up pissing away entire days. If you happen to run into Happy Medium, tell him to start returning my phone calls.

I'll get back with you later tonight and report on the margaritas. And I won't use the backspace key. Well, maybe just a little.

Celestine prophecies

2005-06-15T10:16:00.000-07:00

We now interrupt Liz's VITALLY IMPORTANT WORK DAY FULL OF VITALLY IMPORTANT TASKS to bring you this message. And, incidentally, to preserve Liz's sanity for at least 24 more hours.

It's bad enough having 30 small things to get done in a day. At least then, I can make a big long list and feel really good every time I cross off an item. What's far worse, in my opinion, is having three things huge things to do for which you a) are solely responsible and b) receive not even a reasonable amount of cooperation.

So I quit. For like, 30 minutes. Nyeh.

In that 30 minutes, I will read and write blog entries, for that is what I wish to do with this time that is mine. Nyeh.

I read Laura's blog today and she was talking about fireworks and how that was a theme for her and Kris when they were dating. It reminded me that Chris and I had a theme, too. I have never before, and never since, stumbled upon as many freak meteor showers as Chris and I did when we were dating. It got to the point where sometimes we would go sit outside at night and make shooting stars appear. I considered it a public service.

I wonder if it would still work. Not that we would be able to see a damn thing in our downtown duplex with that security light sitting ten feet from the front porch. The country has its advantages.

Another thing that struck me about the fireworks/meteors thing is how strangely appropriate it seems. Chris and I are meteor shower people. Kris and Laura are fireworks people. I don't know why, but to me it makes perfect sense in a way that only random celestial events can.

Shut up, spider senses.

2005-06-10T06:17:00.000-07:00

Twice this week, I have found myself amazed by two things:
1. How much you don't know about a person
2. How accurately you can guess about what you don't know, even if you'd rather not

My lesson of the week is to trust my instincts about people a tad more. In both cases, I sensed big trouble and haggled it down in my head until it amounted to no big deal. As it turns out, I grossly underestimated the circumstances.

I know I do this because I hate to think bad things about people without some kind of supporting evidence. And actually, I had supporting evidence. I just wanted to believe that people can change. And I do believe that, but also, when a person changes, you'll know it. A leopard doesn't just go around parading new spots without being noticed.

I'm a Super Geek! Super Geek! I'm super geeky!

2005-06-09T09:09:00.000-07:00

I'm about to put on my Dungeon Mistress hat again (why does that title sound so...dirty?). To answer your question, no, I don't really have a hat. But if I did, I wouldn't be ashamed of it. It would probably be a crown. Maybe even a tiara, as a reverent nod to that rare bird, geeky femininity. But I don't like hats, so there ya go.

I honestly think that more women should take roleplaying for a test drive. It's imaginative and cerebral and intellectually stimulating. It's a workout for your brain that involves problem-solving, morality issues, identity exploration, and all sorts of other cool stuff us girls like to throw around recreationally anyway. I think we could lend some depth to the game that the boys, with all their talk about whose composite bow is bigger, are sorely lacking.

In other news, Chris will be working all weekend long. So in typical grieving widow fashion, I think I'll go to a concert. David Wilcox and his Amazing Magical Capos are playing at the WorkPlay Theatre in Birmingham, which is a venue I've been wanting to check out anyway. I'm going to invite some far-flung cousins I haven't seen in a while. It's been a while since I've had time to do anything spontaneous or social or...at all. So I'm hoping I can seize the carp and do something fun with people I love.

Things That Shall Come to Pass Because I Will It So

2005-06-07T13:32:00.000-07:00

1. I will continue to go to the Y at least three times a week.

2. Chris and I will finish Laura's birthday CD, regardless of the fact that her birthday was two months ago and counting.

3. Duplex renovations will be completed.

4. We will purchase a brand new car which will get excellent gas mileage and last for 20 years with minimal upset.

5. I will be as funny as Cookie when I talk about my awful neighbors (not you, Kelly).

6. I will someday not have crackhead neighbors (not you, Kelly).

7. When I think about going to the afternoon service next Sunday, I will not be contentedly curled up in blankets on the couch in the middle of a SciFi original movie.

8. I will stop rotting my brain by watching SciFi original movies (but they're so funny).

9. I will remember to take the suit Nibbler peed on to the dry cleaner.

10. I will make time to visit my grandparents more often, while I still can.

The first step to recovery

2005-06-04T21:29:00.000-07:00

I've just been talking to Jaimie, who called from Tennessee after a hard day's work and one too many margaritas. She was telling me I don't blog enough.

This, after an e-mail from Laura saying something to the effect that she was getting ready to bitch me out for not updating when she caught my post on Thursday.

Well guys, I'm sorry I can't be a perfect poster like you. No, really, I am truly envious of your clockworkesque updates. I'm grateful to have something new to read every day and I wish I could do the same for you. But the thing is, I don't have the time. It's not that I don't have the time to sit down, type something out, and click on "Publish". It's that I don't have the time to have a life that's interesting enough to write about.

Hi, my name is Liz, and I'm a workaholic.

Maybe it hasn't gone that far, but it's definitely in the genes. So you guys, continue to be my accountability partners. If I'm not posting enough, it's because I'm working too hard, and you have my permission to yell at me about it.

You're THIS close to being off my reading list, buddy.

2005-06-03T13:12:00.000-07:00

Dear Mr. Salvatore,

If I may offer a small critique, please stop making the endings of your books so dismally depressing. It's affecting my work.

Let's look at Sea of Swords with some objectivity, okay? You went to great lengths to concoct some half-plausible reason why Catti-Brie would happen to have a healing potion on her person when she found Drizzt. How hard would it have been for her to have two? Let's give ol' Drizzt something else to feel guilty about why don't we?

Jerk.

Love,
Liz

Okay, thanks. You can go now.

2005-06-02T07:34:00.000-07:00

I remember way back a couple of weeks ago when I thought, "It sure hasn't rained very much lately. I wish it would." Because I like the rain. I like it so much that when it began to fall again, I was happy about it for the first three days or so.

But now it's getting old.

What is this? Day 5? And no end in sight, apparently. I think it's starting to wear on me. It's just dark all the time, even when it's not pouring. And people change in the dark. They get moody and reclusive and depressed. Not that I'm particularly moody or depressed, but I have noticed that I really don't want to be bothered and when the phone rings, I take it as a personal affront.

On the dreary, rainy day that was yesterday, a nurse came and stuck me with needles. Twice. It hurt a little, but I was a big girl. She stuck Chris too, but only once. She took two vials each of our blood, and then she just walked off, like she wasn't going to give it back. "Hey!" I said. "I thought you just wanted to look at it!" And she cackled and sped off and probably found a dark alley to park in while she did shots with MY blood. Damn vampire nurses. They normally only come out at night, but she could come out in the daytime because of the stupid clouds.

That didn't really happen. But a nurse really did come and steal blood. And pee. And she really did have to stick me twice. So really it's just the second part that I made up. And the part about her being a vampire I can neither confirm nor deny, but I always thought vampires would be mean, and she was pretty nice.

She was really there to make sure Chris and I were healthy because we're taking out life insurance policies on each other. So as soon as that stuff gets processed, we will officially be worth way more to each other dead than alive.

Cheers and Jeers

2005-05-25T12:28:00.000-07:00

Everybody's talking about entertainment so I thought I'd chime in.

For the record, I loved, loved, loved Revenge of the Sith. Also, I agree with pretty much everything she had to say. (That link was stolen from Laura's blog, so go there too.) I saw the flaws, every last one of them. The story left more thirsty after it was over than I was before I saw it. It was like really craving water and getting coffee instead. I think what I loved what that for the first time since that bratty kid walked onscreen, I found Anakin to be a sympathetic character. Many people will disagree with me there, but my heart went out to him, and that's all there is to it.

Cookie talked about her newfound love for House, and can I just chime in that I'm right there with you? I've seen bits of episodes this season, but for the last three weeks, I haven't missed one. The characters are interesting and well-developed, not to mention portrayed by decent actors (even the young ones...GASP!). And Dr. House is so so funny, even though I wouldn't in a million years want him to be my doctor. I also like it because deep down, it amuses me that Chris can't stand it. It really bothers him that the main character is such an incredible ass. He just can't get past it, and he can't understand how I can.

"If I said that to you, you'd slap me."

"Heh. If you said that to me, I'd leave you."

"So why is it funny when he says it?"

"Um. He's on TV."

But the winner for Best New Drama in my book is Medium. Again, I lean toward mature, experienced actors whom I can trust to deliver the lines they're given responsibly. After watching Patricia Arquette and Jake Weber banter about who's taking the kids to school, I find Smallville and One Tree Hill unwatchable.

I guess I don't have any jeers to speak of, at least not out of the shows I watch regularly. But then, if I didn't like them, I guess I wouldn't watch them. Does it count that Law & Order isn't the same without Jerry Orbach? Maybe it counts if I throw in that I don't like the new lady ADA. But I didn't like Elizabeth Rohm at first either (even though she did time on Angel), so I'll give her a shot and try to come to terms with the fact that Angie Harmon is gone and no one will ever take her place.

Requiem for a Kitten

2005-05-24T08:03:00.000-07:00

Sneezy is in a better place. I sometimes wonder if it's better to let nature take its course. He probably wouldn't have lived as long if we hadn't tried to save him, and maybe it would've been easier that way. I know kittens die all the time, but I didn't think Sneezy would. I thought we could fix it. One of these days, I'll learn the valuable lesson that when grief is imminent, it helps to prepare yourself for it.

On a happier note, we have a new neighbor who's super fly. And she's going to adopt a kitten, so it can stay close to home.

Also, Cookie has a blog! Welcome to the fold. The grass really is greener on this side.

Catching Up

2005-05-17T09:50:00.000-07:00

As always.

In tonight's episode:
Why Kids Can Wait
Chris and Liz's Day o' Honda
Gearing Up for the Move
A Question for Jaimie

I. Why Kids Can Wait

Chris and I have slept head-to-head on our L-shaped couch for three out of the last four nights. I've felt compelled to stay near our kittens, because one of them is sick. It's a cute little orange kitty which we temporarily named Sneezy after the tell-tale signs of upper respiratory infection it so cutely exhibited. We have since renamed it Banshee, or Screaming Banshee, or S.B., because it has been wailing for a straight week. I thought it was having a hard time breathing and maybe it was frustrated about all the sneezing and the snot. But then, one day, I realized that the little guy was about half the size of his brothers and sisters (honestly, I think it really happened overnight). So I guess he's been crying because he's been hungry, constantly, for the last week. I didn't suspect that because he wasn't being shunned or anything. He just suddenly lost all natural instinct and could for the life of him not remember where the teet is and what it is for.

I swear, we've spent so much time coaching this kitten to suckle, which he could do just fine before, but he just doesn't get it. Half the time I'll catch him looking for somewhere to feed, facing the wrong way. So the last few days, we've been bottle-feeding him at all hours of the day and night. I'll wake up all bleary-eyed at 5 a.m. and hear him screaming, and I'll get up and grab his bottle out of the fridge. I'll hold it under hot water until it warms to room temperature, and I'll squirt some on my finger to make sure it's not too hot. It's about that time, every day, that it occurs to me I shouldn't have to be doing this yet. I'm intentionally avoiding this very thing. But I guess it's good practice, and hey, no diapers.

II. Chris and Liz's Day o' Honda

Chris and I test-drove Hondas yesterday. We want a hybrid, and all they had in a hybrid was an Accord. But we were really interested in the Civic, so we drove the hybrid Accord and the regular Civic EX, to get a feel for the difference.

Laura, Kristie, you were right.

After riding around in the Accord, the Civic felt like being locked in a closet with airbags. The Accord had XM and separate passenger temperature controls and cool stuff like that. But what difference took the biggest toll on me? The fact that the Accord had one of those awesome retracting change holders in the compartment between the seats, and the Civic didn't. It wouldn't have felt like so much of a compromise for me if not for that.

We told them we couldn't buy the damn thing that day, but they convinced us to see what financing would be like anyway. Sure, satisfy my curiosity. Why not? It took them three hours to let us know we couldn't afford it, at least not with their financing options. And there goes the afternoon we'd set aside to get our personal business done. Live and learn.

III. Gearing Up for the Move

Why is that title a shameless pun? I'll tell you why.

Jaimie's moving into her very own house later this week (w00t!), so Chris and I went over to her place last night where we celebrated by drinking wine and cutting styrofoam into the shape of gears. I cut out the biggest one and I got styro-shrapnel all over me. It was a winter wonderland in Jaimie's kitchen floor (I hope the term "winter wonderland" hasn't been distorted into some disturbing sexual idiom yet, because Laura could already make that last sentence sound trashy).

While we were cutting gears (great, now everything sounds dirty...Laura, somehow this is your fault), Jaimie gave me the honor of previewing her next Weekly, under the condition that I read it aloud. So now Chris and I have read the Weekly. And so has Jose Conseco. But you haven't. Neener.

IV. A Question for Jaimie

You know how there is no #6? Is that a reference to Season 6 of Xena, which the fans wish did not exist? Because I always just thought that was random, but if that's the case, it's really funny.

Lord's Gym

2005-05-10T20:24:00.000-07:00

I just saw this commercial, twenty seconds ago. My first response, my only possible response, was to rush to my computer like it was the first toilet I'd seen for 20 miles on the interstate after a Sonic chili dog.

The commercial announced the grand opening of Lord's Gym, a place where you can go to enrich your body and your spirit at the same time. At first, I just assumed it was somebody's last name or something. That's what I wanted to believe. But the mural of Almighty God on the wall next to the indoor running track with a bubble next to his head saying, "You can run a 10-minute mile, thus sayeth the Lord!" convinced me otherwise. (Okay, I made up the head bubble, but not the mural. And the head bubble would come as no surprise.)

And I was worried about being judged at a normal gym.

I was trying to get Chris's attention to show him God's Chosen Gymnasium when the logo popped up at the tail end of the commercial. You guys, it was a drawing of Jesus, with the cross on his back, and it looked like he was doing a push-up. With the cross on his back. I think...I'm going to be sick. I paused it on that logo and rewound it so Chris could hear the peppy synth music behind it and get the full effect.

"Chris, look at this. It's called Lord's Gym."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah, and they're really talking about the Lord."

"Oh, that's just..."

"Yeah, and look at this..."

"Oh Lord."

I honestly tried for a good 10 seconds to think the best of the situation. Maybe their hearts are in the right place. Maybe they're not just trying to shamelessly capitalize on something the majority of the population holds sacred for a buck. Maybe the point of the Jesus logo...wait, I just said "Jesus logo". No. Uh-uh. Not today.

The only thing I can figure is that they're counting on a big audience of people who think of religion and exercise exactly the same way: something they participate in occasionally to make them feel better about themselves without actually having to change.

This is both funny and sad to me, but I think if the two conflicting emotions settled their differences mano y mano, sad would win.

Feliz Dia de Madre

2005-05-09T06:17:00.000-07:00

I've always thought of Mother's Day as a Hallmark holiday, but somehow it has more credibility now that I know they celebrate it in Mexico. Probably other places too, but I know about Mexico. The cool thing is that in Mexico, they always celebrate it on the 10th. There's none of this crap where it just has to be on a Sunday so that mothers everywhere have another excuse to drag their grown children kicking and screaming to the church of their youth. I don't know about anyone else, but the church of my youth gives me hives. Fortunately, I think it may have the same affect on my parents.